Good morning,
What Nick Pivetta did yesterday was the kind of achievement that must be appreciated.
Whatever it ends up leading to, however long it lasts, Pivetta coming back to pitch this season is impressive.
He did not make it back from his elbow injury in time to help himself to guaranteed money. But he kept working, and he did get back. He pitched five scoreless innings in his first start in nearly five months. And he might be able to help the Padres make it to the postseason and maybe even deep into the postseason.
“I mean, that’s the ultimate goal,” Pivetta said. “I want to help these guys win a World Series. I want to help this organization win a World Series. And I want to contribute to the team winning. And that’s what I’m here to do. I’m here to play baseball. I’m here to grind. I’m here to just contribute the best I possibly can and just keep going forward.”
You can read in my game story (here) about Pivetta and the bullpen’s back-end trio getting the Padres to their third victory in four games.
We will talk later about the good and bad of an offense that got eight of its nine hits from three important players. We will also talk about how Bradgley Rodriguez, Adrian Morejón and Mason Miller need a rest.
The game story focused largely on what Pivetta went through the past five months and what he did yesterday in retiring 15 of the 17 batters he faced.
Let’s talk now about what it could mean that the Padres got their opening-day starter back.
Pivetta returning is potentially a significant boon for the Padres, who did not know whether he would be able to do so.
The team added Casey Mize and Robbie Ray at the trade deadline, and their six starts apiece have provided mixed results.
The Padres will need just three starting pitchers for the first round of the postseason, should they make it as a wild-card entrant. (They remain a half-game behind the Diamondbacks in the race for the National League’s final spot with 18 regular season games remaining.)
The way Mize and Ray have pitched recently — Mize having allowed 15 runs (10 earned) over his past three starts and Ray surrendering five runs in 2⅓ innings in his last start — the Padres might not feel good running both (or either) of them out in a playoff series.
There is plenty of time for that to change. And there is no guarantee Pivetta will continue to pitch as well as he did yesterday. But his presence at least put another arm in the mix.
“If he pitches like that — like an ace — and throws five shutout innings,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said, “that’s a potential playoff starter.”
Vásquez’s utility
The Padres say they do not plan to use six starters over the season’s final three weeks.
But they could do so once during the stretch of 10 games without a day off that begins Friday. If that happens, the sixth starter could be slotted in next Tuesday in Colorado. Randy Vásquez worked seven scoreless innings at Coors Field in April and last season turned in two quality starts there.
For now, it is fortunate he is available in the bullpen.
Because he figures to play a significant role in the coming days.
“I think we may be seeing Randy here late in some games coming up,” Stammen said after yesterday’s game. “The ‘big three’ have kind of worked a lot here lately in a lot of close games, and we’ve pushed them a little bit. Sooner or later, they’re going to need a day.”
It almost certainly cannot be too soon. Like today.
Rodriguez, Morejón and Miller — the aforementioned “big three” in the bullpen — have all pitched three of the past four days.
Miller worked two innings to get the win Friday and earned the save Sunday and yesterday. Morejón, whose 77⅔ innings are a career high, worked the eighth in those three games. Rodriguez, a 22-year-old rookie, pitched the seventh in all three.
Vásquez has a 2.68 ERA and 3.21 FIP over his past 43⅔ innings in 10 games (six starts, four relief appearances).
“Randy can pitch out of the bullpen and be very effective,” Stammen said. “We’re probably missing that right-hand reliever, outside of Bradgley, that can come in and dominate. (David) Morgan has done a little bit of it. We’ve got (Griffin) Canning. I think Randy can fit into that and maybe be a weapon out of the pen that we could use for the rest of the season and hopefully in the playoffs.”
M&M
Look no further than how Miller and Morejón have been used over the past four games to understand how the Padres’ fortunes have changed.
While the Padres went 2-7 from Aug. 24 through Wednesday, Miller pitched in three losses and Morejón in five losses. Neither pitched in a victory in that span.
Their three appearances since Friday have all been in wins.
I wrote in yesterday’s newsletter about Morejón’s workload and how he said it has not affected him very much.
Morejón felt the same way physically yesterday while retiring all three batters he faced as he felt a day earlier while allowing three runs (two earned) in the eighth inning.
Except one thing.
“Today, I threw angry,” he said.
Adam getting there
Jason Adam, whose 1.88 ERA in 128 games since he joined the Padres at the trade deadline in 2024 is third best among qualifying relievers, appears close to providing the Padres with another option to cover late innings.
Adam threw around 30 pitches with a hitter standing in the batter’s box yesterday morning.
“That’s a long inning,” he said of the glorified bullpen session. “I hope I don’t do that when I come back.”
Joking aside, yesterday continued a trend that has Adam on track to likely return in about a week.
“No pains,” Adam said. “Felt like stuff was moving right. A little rusty with some of the command, but it felt like it was like every other pitch. So the next pitch would be good. … Really clean. I felt like I liked how I was moving today. It’s just repeating that and increasing the speed of it. I felt like the movements were good.”
The expectation from the time he was sidelined in early July was that once his shoulder strain was healed he would be able to ramp up fairly quickly. That is coming to fruition.
“The initial part was slower than I would have liked,” Adam said. “But once I started throwing, I’ve been very pleased with the progress.”
The plan is for Adam to throw a live batting practice before one game on a rehab assignment, which will likely be Sunday.
Almost all good
A win is a win. Right?
Well, this is the time of year we can also start to judge patterns and assign value to what we see.
Things can change in the three weeks before the postseason begins. But if the Padres are to get there and stay there longer than a series, it will be important that the entire machine gets pumping in sync.
Recently, the pitching staff has mostly been near the top of its game.
Padres pitchers have over the past 14 games posted a 2.62 ERA.
The starting pitchers have gone at least six innings and allowed one or fewer runs in five of those games. They have had what I call an “adequate start” (between 5 and 5⅔ innings while allowing no more than two runs) in another five games. The starters’ collective ERA of 2.61 ranks second in the major leagues in that span.
The bullpen’s 2.62 ERA in those 14 games ranks third in MLB.
Over the past 13 games, the Padres offense ranks 29th in MLB in runs per game (3.2), 28th in batting average (.210), 27th in OPS (.622) and 30th in average with runners in scoring position (.170).
Their three hits with runners in scoring position yesterday were one more than they had in the previous three games and as many as they had in the previous five.
But they went hitless in their final four attempts with runners in scoring position. They could have/should have scored at least one more run, though not getting at least that one additional run was the result of Luis Campusano making a baserunning blunder that resulted in him being doubled up at second base.
“We had a lot of chances, it felt like, to break the game open, and we just weren’t able to get that big two-out hit,” Stammen said, repeating a refrain from large swaths of the season. “And that’s baseball. It’s not like it’s a given. That’s why it’s hard to hit. So we get a few of those here and there, we’re going to break a lot of those games open.”
One thing to consider is that the Padres did hit 13 balls at 100 mph or harder, tied for their second most in a game this season and their most since a season high 14 on July 19 in Kansas City. (They scored 19 runs that day.)
The Padres were 7-for-13 on those balls yesterday.
“We’ve been hitting the ball hard right at people,” Manny Machado said. “Weve been doing really good. Hitting the ball hard. Just a little bit unlucky.”
Big day
The Padres had just nine hits yesterday, the sixth consecutive game in which they did not reach double digits. That is the longest such streak since a nine-game stretch from June 20 to 28.
Another positive to glean, however, was in seeing who had those hits.
Eight of them were by Machado (two), Jackson Merrill (three) and Fernando Tatis Jr. (three).
It was just the third time this season the offense’s “big three” had that many hits. The only time they combined for more was when they had 11 in an 8-7 victory over the Rockies on July 28.
Merrill, batting in what has become his customary No.5 spot, drove in the Padres’ first and third runs. Machado, batting third, drove in the middle run and scored the other two. Tatis, who has hit leadoff in his past 96 starts, scored once.
“We’ve just got to hit,” Machado said. “We’ve got to have good at-bats. .. We continue doing that, we’re going to be in a good spot.”
Now, don’t expect to see the trio batting in succession, as they did 38 times in the season’s first 100 games but have not since.
“I think the way Jackson has been hitting down in the five hole has been a really good thing for our team,” Stammen said. “It’s going to be hard for me to move him out of that spot just because of the success that he’s had in that spot and hitting right after Manny and Ty (France).”
Merrill is not only batting .291 with an .881 OPS since moving full-time to the No.5 spot on July 21, he is batting .227 with a .653 OPS this season when in the No.2 hole.
The quandary for the Padres is that they are getting an MLB-worst .658 OPS out of the 10 players who have hit second this season.
So Stammen would not rule out Merrill getting time there.
“It’s definitely under consideration,” he said. “We talk about the lineup all the time and how that’s going to fit and how we can best score runs. Losing Luis Rengifo, who was a big holder of that two-hole was definitely (detrimental). But yeah, we’ll keep trying to find the right solution in that. I still feel like Jake (Cronenworth) is going to be able to hit right-handed pitching and be a good at-bat in that two hole, and I think (Xander Bogaerts) is possibly someone in there. We’ve tried (Samad) Taylor. There’ll be some other guys that get a shot there.”
Hard road
Merrill had much better luck yesterday on balls he smoked.
A day after going 0-for-3 despite putting balls in play at 99.6 mph, 104.3 mph and 112.7 mph, he went 3-for-4 with two singles (at 110 mph and 106 mph), a double (at 112 mph) and a groundout (at 111 mph).
Merrill has been hitting the ball harder over the past two weeks than at almost any point in his career.
He has in 11 games since Aug. 26 put 16 balls in play at 100 mph or harder. The only time he hit more balls that hard in an 11-game span was when he put 20 balls in play at 100 mph or harder from March 30 through May 10, 2025, a stretch that was interrupted by his 29-day stay on the injured list.
Here are the numbers from those two 11-game stretches:
Merrill had over the 10 games leading up to yesterday hit .250 with an expected batting average of .351.
“I’ve been feeling good, so glad I found some grass,” he said. “I was frustrated. I want to get hits. I want to win games. … But it’s a process. So just trust in it, and I go home every day and know I did the right stuff.”
Into, not over
Merrill, whose specialty has become leaping above the outfield wall to rob home runs, went into the wall in yesterday’s first inning.
The second batter of the game, Abimelec Ortiz, lined a ball at 106 mph off his bat that Merrill ran 73 feet and made a tiny leap to grab a step before his shoulder and the side of his face crashed into the padded wall.
“It was kind of fun,” Merrill said. “Not gonna lie, it did hurt a little bit. But at this point of season, everything kind of hurts. So you just keep going.”
Jackson Merrill makes the running catch into the wall! pic.twitter.com/hr1ZhzTSKr
— MLB (@MLB) September 7, 2026
Salas’ start
Ethan Salas made his second start for the Padres behind the plate yesterday, working with Pivetta just as he did in the pitcher’s rehab start last week in Triple-A.
“We’re looking for Ethan to get some playing time,” Stammen said. “We think he’s a really good player, and he can help us down the stretch and hopefully into the playoffs. Ethan catching Nick in his last rehab start was probably a big advantage for him being able to start today, just with the familiarity of him from the last outing.”
As expected, the 20-year-old Salas’ easier transition to the highest level has been at catcher.
“My defense … it never goes away for me,” Salas said. “Whether I’m hitting or not, it’s our job as catchers to be dialed in back there and 100% locked in. So I think that’s something that always, always goes with me everywhere. The hitting will come along.”
The Padres’ No.1 prospect has started three times (once as the designated hitter) since being called up Sept. 1. After going 0-for-2 yesterday, he is hitless in 10 at-bats.
“My swings feel good,” Salas said. “Some little things to keep working on. It’s baseball. I mean, I’m young. I’m coming up here adjusting, so I’m just trying to stay locked in and hopefully … the team wins as much as possible. And thankfully, we got that done today.
“We’re in the best league in the world, so there’s no going up from here. It is what it is. Got to go out there and compete. Whoever’s on the mound, it’s my job to compete at my best level every single day.”
Tidbits
Miguel Andujar (wrist) went to Lake Elsinore to face minor league pitchers in a batting practice session yesterday and is expected to begin a rehab assignment with Triple-A El Paso this week.
To make room for Pivetta on the active roster, the Padres optioned pitcher Jhony Brito to Triple-A. With Pivetta coming off the 60-day injured list, that meant a spot had to be cleared on the 40-man roster. That was accomplished when catcher Blake Hunt was designated for assignment.
Tatis stole his 32nd base of the season yesterday, tying the career high he set in 2025.
Merrill stole his 25th base yesterday. With three more home runs, he would join Wil Myers, Reggie Sanders and Tatis (three times) as the only players in Padres history with at least 25 homers and 25 steals in a season.
Tatis’ 14 games with at least three hits this season are tied for second most in the major leagues. It is also the most three-hit games he has had in a season.
Machado is batting .429 with a .514 on-base percentage during an eight-game on-base streak.
The home run Dylan Crews hit in the sixth inning was the first allowed by Kyle Hart since July 4, a span of 19 games (24⅓ innings).
Bogaerts was 1-for-3 with a walk and is getting on base at a .347 clip over his past 32 starts.
With one run in the first inning yesterday, the Padres moved into a tie with the Blue Jays for last in the major leagues with 60 runs.
All right, that’s it for me.
Talk to you tomorrow.