Good morning,
For a night, it went like it was supposed to.
That was far better than it had gone in some time.
The sort of new-look Padres won a game in a way they haven’t won many but also in the only way they seem to be able.
You can read in my game story (here) about how the Padres got big nights from Freddy Fermin and newcomers Jase Bowen and Samad Taylor in a 6-2 victory over the Reds.
It was unique because the Padres got a hit with a runner in scoring position and bunted another runner home in the seventh inning and then strung together hits in the eighth inning. It was the usual because it was supporting characters playing the leading roles.
Doubles by Xander Bogaerts and Gavin Sheets started the seventh. Bunts by Bowen, Taylor and Fermin brought in a run and loaded the bases. And then the momentum evaporated, as Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jackson Merrill made the first two outs of the inning before Ty France made the third.
In the eighth inning, Bogaerts, Bowen, Taylor and Fermin all hit singles between Manny Machado making the first out and Tatis making the final out.
Much about last night’s victory should be celebrated, and we will talk more about the contributions of the new guys and the resurgence of Fermin.
But the Padres’ third victory in 14 games was replete with reminders of the team’s biggest problems.
One victory (or even two or three or five more in a row) does not change what has been the case virtually the entire season.
There is not a person in the organization who will deny that if Machado, Merrill and Tatis continue to be as unproductive as they have been, then nothing Taylor or Bowen or Fermin or anyone else does will have a lasting impact.
OK, enough of the sobering reality.
Hey, the Padres are tied for the final wild-card spot in the National League with 97 games remaining.
Freddy on Fire
It has been a while since a member of the supporting cast lifted the Padres’ performance with any regularity.
Things had gotten so bad for Fermin that it seemed highly improbable he would join the ranks of Sheets and France and Miguel Andujar as one of the guys to carry the team.
Four days ago, Fermin was the only Padres player who had been to the plate more than 40 times and had not homered. He was batting .126 (13-for-103) and was hitless in his previous 29 at-bats.
Now, he is 5-for-9 with two sacrifice bunts and has driven in seven of the Padres’ 12 runs over their past three games,
His solo home run in last night’s third inning, which put the Padres ahead 1-0, gave him a homer in three consecutive games, something no other Padres player has done this season. His single in the eighth inning, which drove in the final run, gave him his second multi-hit game in three days.
Fermin was fairly stoic when speaking to the media after the game. But he was smiling at various points as he rounded the bases on his home run. And the way his teammates responded in the dugout seemed to say something.
The Ferminator 🦾 pic.twitter.com/K5VhOp2XIH
— San Diego Padres (@Padres) June 7, 2026
“We just don’t have many guys that are hot right now, and so when somebody gets hot, it’s exciting, and we’re all smiling and having fun,” manager Craig Stammen said. “These guys are tight in the clubhouse. And especially when one of their brothers is kind of really, really scuffling more than he ever has in his career, it’s just good to see when somebody snaps out of it and has a smile on his face and is able to do something for the team.”
Fermin said he began watching video last week of at-bats from as far back as him hitting in the minor leagues to see where he had gone astray. He liked his at-bats in the final game of the road trip on Thursday, even though he did not get a hit.
The Padres have hardly wavered in their belief Fermin is a winning piece, and Stammen felt the need to reassure him along the way.
“We’re talking with all these guys and trying to build them up,” Stammen said. “You wonder what comes first. Does success come first and then confidence, or can confidence come first and then that leads to success? Nobody really knows the complete answer to that, but we’re trying to breathe that confidence in all these guys. We’ve had opportunities to sit down with Freddy individually and tell him he’s our starting catcher and that we believe in him, and we know this first couple months is not who he is offensively. He’s crushing it on defense. And, you know, maybe that gave him some confidence.”
Fermin did not disagree.
“Craig has been very supportive through all of this,” he said through interpreter Pedro Gutiérrez. “We’ve had a lot of conversations. Most of all, he’s been giving me the confidence knowing I can do this (and) I am the catcher of this team.”
Tandem
Last night is about everything the Padres had in mind when they called up Bowen and Taylor on successive days last week and said they were hoping the two athletic outfielders provided a spark.
“They basically won us the game tonight,” Stammen said. “Just being able to execute what we’re asking them to do — steal some bases and put some bunts down, take some good ABs. … They just bring a lot of intangibles to the game that can create some havoc and make the other team have to make plays. Tonight was indicative of that, and it helped us win the game.”
Bowen was called up to replace the injured Ramón Laureano last Tuesday. He was seen as someone who played solid defense, could run and possessed some power.
He struggled to maintain discipline at the plate while going 1-for-12 with six strikeouts to start his career. But last night he drew his first walk and stole his first base in the second inning and then laid down his first bunt and got a hit out of it in the seventh.
After beating the throw to first base, Bowen clapped his hands together and hollered a few times.
“I just started practicing bunt and (have) been working really hard at it,” he said. “And anytime that you can get on and get the runner over, it fires me up.”
Bowen also singled and stole second before scoring along with Bogaerts on Taylor’s single in the eighth inning.
“It’s old-school baseball,” Bowen said. “That’s what we’re here to do is just kind of create chaos and just have fun with it.”
While Bowen is new to bunting, it was a big part of what the Padres expected Taylor to bring, along with speed.
He bunted home a run in the seventh and then drove in the two runs with a soft liner just over the shortstop with two outs in the eighth.
Taylor, called up when Nick Castellanos was designated for assignment, also threw out a runner trying to score on a fly ball to end the second inning and made a running catch against the wall in left-center field in the sixth inning.
“You get called up, you want to help the team,” said Taylor, who played 31 games for the Royals in 2023 and had a short stint each of the past two seasons with the Mariners. “Any way to help team. … The only thing we want to do is win. Whatever we’ve got to do to win, we’re going to do it.”
Finding a way
The seventh inning was big for how it happened too.
During their skid of 11 losses in 13 games leading up to last night, the Padres had scored in just eight of the 31 innings in which their leadoff batter reached base. That included them scoring just five times in the nine innings in which they had a man on second base with no outs.
They had all but ceased getting hits with runners in scoring position. And they had not made many productive outs recently.
They have essentially stopped advancing runners with grounders to the right side or fly ball outs over the past few weeks, and they have hardly utilized the sacrifice bunt all season.
Last night, they tried three straight sacrifice bunts and ended up getting two singles and a sacrifice.
The bunt hits by Bowen and Taylor doubled the Pades’ total to four for the season, and Fermin’s bunt gave them seven sacrifice bunts.
The Padres led the major leagues with 48 sacrifice bunts in 2025 and were second with 28 sacrifice bunts in ‘24. Their 35 bunt hits the previous two seasons ranked sixth in MLB in that span.
The Padres ended up going 5-for-9 with runners in scoring position last night. They had been 5-for-27 over their previous seven games and 11-for-84 over their previous 18 games. It was their most hits with runners in scoring position since they went 5-for-11 on May 17 (a span of 19 games).
Not bad
Walker Buehler was not as sharp last night as he had been six days earlier in holding the Phillies to a run on four hits over six innings. Nor did he throw as hard.
“Just didn’t have kind of the edge to a lot of the pitches,” he said. “Kind of long at-bats, wasn’t quite as explosive.”
Buehler averaged 94.3 on his sinker and 94.1 on his fastball. He never hit 96.0 mph, something he did a dozen times against the Phillies. Too many pitches were up in the zone.
Given that — and the fact he allowed eight hits — Buehler found some satisfaction in getting through 4⅔ innings having been charged with just one run.
His satisfaction was merited.
He is the first pitcher since 2019 to have allowed just one run in 4⅔ innings while surrendering more than seven hits.
Different result
The Padres entered last night batting .195 over their previous 13 games, and the starting pitcher they were facing had held them to a .198 average in his four career starts against them.
The Padres got four hits off Andrew Abbott last night, including the two doubles to start the seventh. And when Sheets scored on Taylor’s bunt against Tejay Antone, it meant Abbott would be charged with three runs.
He had a 0.98 ERA over his four starts against them (27⅔ innings) from 2023 to ‘25 and had not allowed more than one run in any of those games.
Now, after getting past a left-hander who has owned them in recent seasons, the Padres face a young right-hander tonight who is like a lot of the pitchers who have mostly owned them this season.
Chase Burns, 23, enters tonight’s game with a 2.05 ERA in 12 starts. He has gone at least 5⅔ innings while allowing no more than two runs in each of his past nine starts.
He will be the eighth qualifying starting pitcher the Padres have faced this season (and the seventh in the past 22 games) with a Stuff+ rating of 107 or higher. The first seven have pitched to a 2.30 ERA in nine games against the Padres. And that number is only that high because they scored seven runs in 6⅔ innings against Logan Gilbert last month.
(Stuff+ is a metric that purports to measure the “nastiness” of a pitcher’s arsenal by taking into account pitch velocity, movement and spin, as well as release point and other factors. A rating of 100 is considered average, a rating of 107+ is considered 7% above average. There are just 13 qualifying starters with a Stuff+ rating of 107 or higher.)
Tidbits
Abbott did turn in the 31st quality start against the Padres this season. Remember, too, they have faced five openers. So 31 of the 60 actual starters to face them have gone at least six innings while allowing no more than three earned runs.
Last night was the first time in nine games and second time in 19 games the Padres reached double-digits in hits. They have not had more than 10 hits in 30 games.
Four Padres (Bogaerts, Bowen, Taylor and Fermin) had two hits last night. It was the first time since May 15 four players had multiple hits. It was the second time this season the team’s 7-8-9 batters all had multiple hits. (It also happened on April 6, when Castellanos, Fermin and Jake Cronenworth all had two hits at Pittsburgh.)
Jeff Sanders’ game preview from yesterday afternoon (here) has updates on Miguel Andujar, Luis Campusano and several players sidelined by injury.
Cronenworth has been in the Padres’ dugout the past three games, an indication of how much better he is feeling. There is still no timeline for his return from the concussion he suffered in mid-April and played with for 2½ weeks. He said he is feeling “so much better” but that there are still parts of some days where he feels symptoms. He is doing some light running, fielding drills and has progressed to soft toss in the batting cage.
Adrian Morejón allowed the runner he inherited from Bradgley Rodriguez to score on a sacrifice fly in the sixth inning, giving the Reds a 2-1 lead. But Morejón pitched a scoreless seventh and got the win when the Padres went ahead in the bottom of that inning and held on. It was his 18th victory since the start of last season, four more than any other MLB reliever in that span.
Bogaerts had one hit in his previous 21 at-bats before his double and single his final two times up last night.
Sheets had one hit in his previous 23 at-bats before his RBI double last night.
Fermin is one of 32 MLB players to have a three-game homer streak this season.
Buehler, Michael King and Randy Vásquez are the only members of the Padres rotation to have made all of their scheduled starts this season. Here are their numbers:
All right, that’s it for me.
Talk to you tomorrow.