Good morning from Cleveland,
The bullpen.
It is so good.
The Padres continued to do a lot of things right last night, including their offensive adjustment to take advantage of a good starting pitcher who did not have his best stuff.
You can read in my game story (here) about how they came back against Gavin Williams and added on enough to hold on for a 7-5 victory over the Guardians.
It was the eighth time in the past 25 games the Padres have scored at least seven runs.
Michael King turned up the heat halfway through his six innings and completed another quality start, as the Padres maintained a one-game lead over the Diamondbacks and Phillies in the National League wild-card race.
But the part of the Padres that screamed playoff potential more than any other was the part that has done so pretty much all season. It was the part of the team built to help make sure the Padres win enough games to get to October and have a real chance once they do.
“I think that just speaks to the beauty of our bullpen and how deep it is top to bottom,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said.
He was referring to how the Padres held out Mason Miller and Adrian Morejón, arguably the best back-end duo in the major leagues, and covered the final three innings in a tight game.
After Yuki Matsui and Jeremiah Estrada worked an inning apiece, the guy on the mound in the ninth inning was rookie Bradgley Rodriguez, who got past a leadoff double to earn his first career save.
“I think what we saw tonight is foreshadowing of what he’ll probably be for a lot of his career,” Stammen said. “He’s just got the stuff that closers are made of, and he’s got the mentality, number one, that closers are made of.”
Rodriguez has increasingly been called on in higher-leverage situations and has shown the ability to get out some of the better hitters in lineups with his high-90s fastball and a changeup that left-handed batters can hardly touch.
And he took his fastball to another level last night. He topped 100 mph three times when he had done so seven times previously and averaged 100.1 mph, up nearly 2 mph from his season average.
“Stuff played up even more,” Miller said. “We’ve seen the type of year he’s had. We know the type of stuff he has. He has pitched in a lot of big spots, so he treated it as no different. … A luxury for us to have guys like him.”
Rodriguez said the save was “the first of many, hopefully, in my major league career.”
He credited the closers he has watched the past two seasons, Robert Suarez and Miller during Rodriguez’s brief call-up at the end of last season and Miller this year, for demonstrating for him the mentality Stammen mentioned.
“I think what you’re really learning from these veteran closers is that there is a sense of calmness that (they) go up there (with) when they’re going into that last inning, and you don’t have all that anxiety rushing up your skin,” Rodriguez said through interpreter Jorge Merlos. “And so for me, it’s just having that calmness when I go out there and using that to the best of my ability to get those guys out.”
After Brayan Rocchio doubled on a grounder just fair and off the glove of diving first baseman Ty France, Rodriguez got a groundout and two strikeouts to end the game.
“I keep saying Bradgley is one of the best relief pitchers in all of baseball, and he proved it again tonight,” Stammen said. “… Even giving up a leadoff double, (as) a rookie, for that to happen to him on the road and to just go, 1-2-3 right after that, that was pretty big.”
Rodriguez has allowed a .202 batting average and has 59 strikeouts in 56 innings. He was excellent before getting a 10-day rest in the minor leagues in June, posting a 2.10 ERA and 2.64 FIP over his first 34⅓ innings (31 appearances). He has a 2.07 ERA and 2.46 FIP over 21⅔ innings (20 appearances) since returning.
Seven of those innings have come in the past nine days, including three two-inning outings.
“He’s thrown a ton, too,” Miller said.”So hopefully we’re able to pick him up now and give him a couple days too.”
That is the plan.
“It’s probably Bradgley’s turn to have a couple days to himself, and those other guys are going to have to pick him up,” Stammen said. “But that’s the beauty. That’s what is awesome about a bullpen, is those guys are their own little team down there together. They rally around each other, pick each other up and cover for each other.”
Necessary rest
There comes a point when a manager has to think about the long run even in the midst of a playoff chase.
So even with a day off Thursday, Miller and Morejón were down yesterday.
Miller had pitched Monday and Wednesday after pitching Thursday and Saturday the previous week and Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday the week before that.
That was 7⅔ innings in seven appearances over 17 days. Moreover, he is at 51⅓ innings in 49 appearances with the Padres having 39 games remaining.
Miller threw 64⅔ innings over 62 games, including the postseason, in 2025. That was a career high in appearances and one-third of an inning off his career high in innings.
Morejón pitched six times (eight innings) in the first 12 days of August and is at 65⅓ innings over 56 appearances. He is just 8⅓ innings from matching the career-high 73⅔ innings he threw in 75 appearances last season.
“I think we had the day on, day off, day on, day off for several (outings),” Miller said. “So take one day off, it’s like guys should be good. But you continue that cycle, it’s kind of a difficult thing to continue on for a while. Kind of saw my effectiveness go down a little bit, too. So, you know, I don’t want to do a disservice to the team at all and not be at my best when we have guys like Bradgley that are fully capable of getting those outs in big spots.”
Taking advantage
Somewhere between the second and third inning, a new approach took hold for the Padres hitters last night.
Basically, “Lay off the heater and get on the stuff he’s throwing for strikes.”
Because Williams certainly was not throwing his fastball for strikes. He all but abandoned throwing either his sinker or four-seamer after throwing six fastballs to Fernando Tatis Jr. in a walk that started the game.
Williams, who averages around 97 mph on both of those fastballs, ended up throwing his two fastballs a combined 33% of the time last night when he had thrown them less than 36% of the time in just two of his previous 24 starts this season. He had thrown his four-seam fastball alone at least 30% of the time in each of his past six starts, during which he had posted a 2.58 ERA and gone at least seven innings three times.
He threw eight of his 23 four-seamers and two of his seven sinkers in the strike zone last night. One of those two sinkers in the zone, up and on the inner third, got yanked down the left field line at 116 mph by Fernando Tatis Jr. for a game-tying home run.
“The fastball was up in the zone, definitely where I didn’t want it to be and the only breaking ball I could throw for strikes was the curveball,” Williams told the Cleveland media afterward. “It’s definitely frustrating, especially on my part.”
One of the breaking balls he put in the zone was a sweeper hung over the middle and almost at the letters that Xander Bogaerts hit 426 feet to left field to a two-run homer.
That got the Padres to 3-2 in the fourth inning.
And five of the six batters Williams faced in the fifth got on base, and three of them scored.
Jake Cronenworth singled on a four-seamer at the top of the zone. Manny Machado singled on a sweeper up and on the inner third. Luis Campusano drove a belt-high four-seamer on the outer third the other way to the wall in right-center.
“He left a couple up,” Bogaerts said. “… The third time (through the order) we kind of got to him.”
Working faster
While Williams faded, King got stronger.
King allowed two home runs on sinkers in the heart of the strike zone in the first three innings.
“That was me trying to locate,” King said. “Because I wasn’t locating in the pregame ‘pen. And that’s where I turn around, see it’s a 92 mph middle-middle sinker, and it’s like, ‘Even if it’s middle-middle, but it’s 95, there’s a better chance that it’s not going to be hit that hard.’ So that’s when I said, ‘Yeah, I’m just going to at least go down with aggression.’”
He began to throw more fastballs in the fourth inning and just kept going.
His seven hardest fastballs — sinkers and four-seamers — came in his final two innings.
“That’s because I was trying to move faster,” King said. “So I was like, moving. When I throw a bunch of changeups, I start to feel that, like, 86 mph delivery, and then when I throw a fastball, it’s that 86 mile an hour delivery but trying to throw harder. So I think there was definitely an emphasis to move faster, throw harder in those later innings.”
Of King’s 43 pitches in the first three innings, 47% were fastballs and 30% were changeups. In his final three innings, he went 60% fastball and 23% changeup. His sweeper usage dropped from 21% to 10%.
Still King of Guards
King’s career ERA against the Guardians more than tripled last night.
After allowing four runs (three earned) in his six innings, he has a 1.26 ERA in eight games (28 ⅔ innings) against them dating back to his time as a reliever with the Yankees.
In his previous two starts against the Guardians, both with the Padres, he had allowed one run in 12 innings.
The Guardians’ eight hits last night were one more than he had allowed in his previous seven games (22 ⅔ innings). Still, he has never pitched in a loss against them.
So Merrill
The $5 million salary escalator Jackson Merrill achieved last night is a reminder that the nature of his contract, which was signed in April 2025 and began this year, was very much befitting of Merrill.
He essentially told his agents to get a deal done and that he did not need to break the bank. At the time, he had played one season in the major leagues and wanted to remain with the Padres and worry only about playing baseball.
The contract devised rewards him for doing just that, because the escalators are all playing-time based.
Every season he reaches 500 plate appearances, he gets a raise.
His first time up last night was Merrill’s 500th plate appearance of the season, which activated a stipulation in his contract that adds $1 million to five different years of his contract.
That pushes the guarantee on his nine-year pact from $135 million to $140 million.
And there is plenty of room for it to go up substantially in the coming years.
The bump the next three seasons would be $5 million each time he does it. Beginning in 2030, the increase goes down $1 million each subsequent season through 2033, which is the second-to-last year on the deal.
Injury that sidelines him upwards of five or six weeks would seem to be the only thing that would keep Merrill from making all of the extra $30 million that is possible.
There is one performance-based clause in the contract.
A top-5 finish in MVP voting any year turns the team’s $21 million option for 2035 into a player option. And any top-10 MVP finish adds $1 million to the 2035 option.
Late notice
This seems like the kind of morning Kyle Hart will wake up to a text message from Craig Stammen.
With the abundance of left-handed hitters and switch-hitters the Guardians have — they had nine batters going from the left side against King last night and had switch-hitter José Ramirez on the bench — it would seem exactly the type of game the Padres had in mind when they decided to make this turn in the rotation “TBD” instead of give it to Randy Vásquez outright.
Hart, a lefty, would seem to be the logical opener with Vásquez following him tonight. Hart has allowed one run in 8⅔ innings in the four games he has served as the starter.
But Hart does not like to know he is starting until the day of the game.
“It frees me up to get my rest and recovery,” he said. “As soon as we start a series with a team, I’ve already prepared anyway. … Having that freedom to get my rest, then come in here fresh and go about my routine.”
You can read a story (here) Annie Heilbrunn posted yesterday talking about some of the changes Hart has made to become a vital part of the Padres bullpen.
Pitching depth
Brent Honeywell, who pitched for the Padres in 2023, was signed to a minor-league contract and will report to Triple-A El Paso.
This is a zero-risk flier for the Padres, who had scouts at a bullpen session last week in which Honeywell hit 96 mph with his fastball.
The 31-year-old right-hander, who has persevered through numerous injuries practically since he was drafted in 2014, has not pitched in the major or minor league since he won a World Series ring with the Dodgers in 2024. Honeywell pitched in 36 games for the Padres in ‘23 before being placed on waivers and selected by the White Sox in August of that season. He began 2024 with the Pirates and was selected off waivers by the Dodgers that July and ended up appearing in two games in the National League Championship Series and throwing one inning in the World Series.
Tidbits
The Padres offense leads the major leagues in average, on-base percentage and slugging. That is a testament to the guys doing the actual hitting. But also, it seems the criticism leveled at hitting coach Steven Souza Jr. may have been a case of premature evaluation. I wrote (here) on Thursday about the evolution of Souza as a coach and the evolution of his relationship with Padres hitters. The quotes from him, Stammen and the hitters are extremely insightful.
Jeff Sanders wrote (here) about Joe Musgrove’s rehab start last night for Triple-A El Paso, in which he threw 70 pitches over 4⅔ innings and threw harder than he had in nine years.
Nick Pivetta’s bullpen session Thursday was conducted at a higher intensity and for longer than his previous time on the mound two days earlier. There is still no scheduled rehab start.
This is the 10th time Tatis has had at least five home runs in a nine-game span but just the third time he has done so since the end of the 2021 season.
The 115.5 mph exit velocity on Tatis’ homer was his fastest this season and the fifth-fastest of his career. The hardest he has ever hit a homer was the one he hit out of Dodger Stadium in 2021 at 116.6 mph.
Tatis is batting .277 with a .999 OPS (eight homers, one triple, six doubles) over his past 24 starts. Merrill is batting .368 with a 1.118 OPS (nine homers, one triple, five doubles) over his past 24 starts.
Ty France went 2-for-4 last night and moved into a tie with Merrill for second on the team with 32 multi-hit games, one behind Tatis. France has started 37 fewer games than both Merrill and Tatis.
Campusano was 2-for-5 with two doubles and three RBIs last night. He is batting .410 (16-for-39) with a 1.055 OPS and 10 RBIs over his past 11 games (10 starts).
Neither France nor Campusano will finish the season with enough plate appearances to be qualifiers. But they are among the major league leaders at their respective positions. Campusano, who has just 146 plate appearances, has the highest batting average (.317) and highest OPS (.935) of any catcher with more than 40 plate appearances. France, who has 343 plate appearances, is third among first basemen with a .298 average and fourth with an .880 OPS.
In addition to hitting a home run for the second straight game, Bogaerts walked twice and hit a sacrifice fly last night. He has a .359 on-base percentage over his past 20 games.
Gavin Sheets was 1-for-5 last night and is batting .122 (9-for-74) over his past 30 games.
Check out Annie Heilbrunn’s latest Q&A (here). This one is with Luis Rengifo. You have to like Rengifo, if for no other reason than his best friend is Luis Arraez.
The Padres are nine games above .500 for the first time since May 22, when they were 31-22.
Last night was the Padres’ ninth victory in a game in which they trailed by three or more runs. That is tied with the Twins for most in the major leagues. The team record is 15 such victories, set in 1995.
All right, that’s it for me.
Talk to you tomorrow.