Good morning from Denver,
You know things are going right for the Padres when the offense is supporting Michael King.
The staff ace has been at his best recently, and the offense is scoring for him more than it has all season.
The Padres scored all of their runs in yesterday’s 9-2 victory over the Rockies while King was still working.
It was King’s eighth consecutive quality start and the fourth consecutive start of his that the Padres have won. (He has gotten the win in all four too.)
King has allowed three or fewer runs and the Padres have scored at least three runs while he has been in all four of those starts. (They have scored at least five runs in three of them and at least seven in the past two.)
This is the kind of symmetry the Padres lacked earlier in the season. And few things exemplified that lack of cohesion better than what the offense tended to do when King pitched.
As random as run support is, it was an example of what plagued the Padres.
The Padres scored zero or one run while King was still the pitcher of record in 14 of his first 27 starts.
The result of that lack of support is that King has a 3.03 ERA, 13th best in the major leagues, and the Padres are 15-16 when he pitches.
What is important now is that King is pitching his best and that the Padres are scoring — not only for him but in most games.
Because the 6-1 road trip they completed yesterday has them much more likely to not only make the postseason but to be able to set up King as the starter in Game 1 of their first playoff series.
Down to it
That scenario we discussed in yesterday’s newsletter happened.
The Padres are four games up with nine to play.
As explained in my game story (here), the Padres’ magic number is six.
If they go 6-3 or better the rest of the way, they’re in, regardless of what the Diamondbacks do. That would get them to 90 wins, and the Diamondbacks can only reach 89.
All the Padres have to do is match the Diamondbacks’ record over the next six games to clinch a playoff spot before the Diamondbacks even come to San Diego for the final series of the season.
The Padres remained a game behind the Phillies and moved within a game of the idle Cubs yesterday.
The Padres lost the season series to both teams and, thus, would lose a two-way and three-way tiebreaker to both. So here is what has to happen for the Padres to pass one or both of them and earn the fourth or fifth seed:
The Padres’ playoff chances are up to 89.5%, according to FanGraphs. (The site’s projections are based on the standings, schedule and each team’s projected performance and 20,000 computer simulations of the rest of the season.)
We have to have learned by now that there is no predicting who will beat who. But we are close enough to the end to take a look at the remaining schedule.
According to FanGraphs, the Phillies (.533) have the most difficult strength of schedule, followed by the Padres (.528), Diamondbacks (.494) and Cubs (.487).
Here are those teams’ remaining games:
For want of one
Xander Bogaerts got the hard part out of the way so quickly that it seemed destined he would hit for the cycle yesterday.
He thought so too.
Recalling how close he came, Bogaerts grimaced, closed his eyes and wiped his hand slowly across his face. He sighed.
“They pitched me tough,” he said. “Last at-bat was a good chance, but they seemed to not want me to get it. I tried.”
Bogaerts was speaking after two strikeouts ended a day he began by getting the rarest components of the cycle — and getting the first two of those in one inning.
“This was like a layup,” he said. “Shows you how hard this game is.”
Bogaerts knows as well as anyone how difficult it is to get a base hit in the major leagues. In his 13th full season, his .256 batting average on balls in play is the lowest of his career and ranks 122nd out of 137 qualifying hitters this season.
Bogaerts homered on the first pitch of the second inning and tripled later in the inning when Rockies right fielder Zac Veen made a dubious decision to dive for a sinking line drive and had the ball get past him. He was the first Padres player to ever homer and triple in the same inning, and it was the first time he had ever homered and tripled in a game.
Two innings later, Bogaerts drove a ball to the gap in left-center field that bounced off the warning track and over the wall.
The Padres were up 7-1 at that point, and Padres manager Craig Stammen said there was cheering in the dugout for the ground-rule double even though it forced Jackson Merrill, who had been on first base, to stop at third.
Bogaerts said he was tempted to hold up at second regardless.
“If it’s the one time I’m gonna get the cycle,” he said. “… Maybe I had to do a little something, maybe, like, hammy or something. But, yeah, I was pulling up.”
In the end, it was just a nice day and not the 355th cycle in major league history (and the fourth in Padres history).
“Just to see a guy that’s struggled a little bit through the season,” Stammen said. “He’s had a lot of balls hit right at people, and for some to fall in and him to be so close to the cycle was pretty exciting.”
More on King
What King did yesterday in the most hitter-friendly, pitcher-demoralizing park in the major leagues and against a top-10 offense was indicative of who he is.
He allowed a run on a triple and a single before making an out and then faded in the sixth inning, when he walked two batters and allowed another run.
In between, he allowed three baserunners.
And he did it with the thin air and heavy humidity making his changeup “cut weird.” He threw it less than he had in all but five starts in his previous three seasons — a lot less than most games. So he was effectively pitching without his best pitch again, and he never looked bothered.
He threw his slider more frequently than he ever has.
It was sort of like how he found a way to get way through the first half of the season — minus the frustration he so frequently showed back then.
After allowing two runs in six innings yesterday, he has a 1.95 ERA over his past eight starts.
And at least the past four of those have been mostly dominant, in contrast to the grind King experienced much of the season as he struggled to consistently command his best pitches. You remember that. We were talking about it after almost every start.
“I know I’ve said it a bunch,” King said yesterday. “Ruben (Niebla) and I worked on mechanics a lot throughout the first half. … I would much rather dominate from Day 1. There were a lot of games there that I did not like playing baseball just because it wasn’t fun. It was me trying to find myself out there, which you never want to be competing against yourself. So there was a stress there that I absolutely hated.”
Yesterday was King’s 31st start of the season, which is one more than he made in 2024, his first full season as a starter. He is up to 181 innings, which is 7⅓ more than in ‘24. His 3.03 ERA means he could potentially best his 2.93 mark from two seasons ago, though he might only have one regular season start remaining.
It seems likely the Padres will switch the start days for Robbie Ray and King, having King start Tuesday against the Dodgers so he can be available for the following Sunday’s season finale in case it matters for seeding or for the Padres to get into the playoffs. (If he did not have to start the finale, he would be available for Game 1 of the Wild Card Series.)
King has made a remarkable rebound from the 15 starts and 73⅓ innings he was limited to by injury last season. And a good game against the Dodgers (for instance, no more than a run in six innings) he would become just the fourth Padres starting pitcher ever to have a sub-3.00 ERA in more than one season in which he made at least 25 starts.
Regardless, King will go into next season shooting for his ultimate goal.
“I think 200 innings is the staple of being a good starting pitcher in this league,” King said. “If a manager trusts you enough to go deeper in the games, that obviously means your ERA is going to be there.”
(To be clear, what King calls a staple has been done 24 times by 19 pitchers over the previous five seasons.)
Don’t wonder anymore
Merrill is elite. We know this because only elite players do what he is doing.
After going 1-for-4 with a very fortunate triple yesterday, Merrill has a .980 OPS over his past 55 games.
It is the second 55-game stretch in his three-year career in which he has had that exact OPS.
He is one of just 15 players to have had a stretch of at least 55 games with an OPS of .980 or higher in two of the past three seasons. The other 14 players:
Yordan Alvarez, Byron Buxton, Rafael Devers, Freddie Freeman, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Aaron Judge, Nick Kurtz, Ketel Marte, Shohei Ohtani, Kyle Schwarber, Corey Seager, Juan Soto, Eugenio Suarez and James Wood.
Manny Machado has had five such stretches since 2015, the most recent in 2021. Fernando Tatis Jr. had a stretch that good in his rookie season (2019) and then finished 2021 with a .975 OPS, fourth highest in Padres history.
Keep going
A potential quirk of the ABS system popped up yesterday. It went largely unnoticed because the original call was upheld, but there might have been some chaos if Tanner Gordon’s pitch had been one-tenth of an inch higher.
In the second inning, Jake Cronenworth took off running for second base on a full-count pitch from Gordon to Samad Taylor. Seeing a ball was called, Cronenworth did not slide and jogged into the base. At the same time, Rockies second baseman Connor Norby also moved up to receive a throw from catcher Brett Sullivan and did not apply a tag on Cronenworth.
ABS confirmed in #Padres at #Rockies (Top 2).
Brett Sullivan challenged the ball call on Tanner Gordon’s pitch to Samad Taylor.
Ball confirmed.
HP: Andy Fletcher | Upheld 28.3% (39/138).
Result: Samad Taylor walks. Jake Cronenworth to 2nd. pic.twitter.com/GzRuVyGyvq
— ABS Auditor (@ABS_Auditor) September 17, 2026
After the ball call was confirmed, Cronenworth and Norby conferred with second base umpire Alex Tosi about what they should have done.
The answer was that they should have both continued the play, meaning Cronenworth should have slid. That is because on that play, the umpire has discretion.
Cronenworth said the umpire told him that because both he and the second baseman had essentially given up on the play, Cronenworth would have been sent back to first base had the ball call been overturned.
Sticking the landing
Griffin Canning ran his scoreless streak to 11 ⅔ innings by getting the final six outs yesterday.
Canning has a 1.11 WHIP in that span.
This is the same guy who had a 6.59 ERA and 1.56 WHIP through his first 20 appearances (71 innings this season).
It seems being moved to the bullpen has sparked the same kind of aggressiveness it does in many pitchers who make the move.
“That’s definitely a factor,” Canning said.
There is also the matter of Canning getting healthier over the course of the season, as he got further removed from the June 2025 surgery to repair his torn left Achilles.
While he returned to pitch for the Padres in May and maintains he has felt good throughout, he wasn’t back to full strength.
And as often happens, he developed some bad habits during his comeback. One of them affected how he “loads” or shifts his balance from his right side to his left in his delivery.
Take a look at how this screenshot (from Padres.TV) that shows how Canning’s left foot has finished his entire career and has resumed doing since mid-July:
And look at this screenshot of how his left foot finished the first two months of his season:
“I think just a bad habit, just protecting my Achilles when I first started throwing,” Canning said. “It just carried over. … I noticed it throughout my rehab and the early part of the year that I was kind of swinging my leg around. It led to some mechanical inconsistencies.”
Canning has over the past month-plus had a little more zip on his fastball and is throwing a lot more of them in the strike zone.
“Yeah,” he said. “Command is better.”
Clarification
In an otherwise glowing item about Ethan Salas, I wrote in yesterday’s newsletter that his second home run would not have cleared the wall “almost anywhere else.”
That was kind of lazy of me.
In trying to provide context that the ball came off his bat at 97 mph in a ballpark a mile above sea level and would not have been a home run everywhere, I went for the easy hyperbole. I was wrong.
Statcast’s park factor projections estimated Salas would have had a home run in 26 of 30 ballparks. That is based on the hit’s projected distance plus elevation, temperature and other environmental factors.
I find 26 difficult to believe. But even if it were 20, that would be a lot closer to every park than almost none.
So there you go. Details are important.
I generally try to be more thorough than I was in making the statement about Salas’ home run. But I also like to get sleep sometimes. So I got sloppy there.
Tidbits
Ty France went 3-for-4 and was hit by a pitch yesterday. He is batting .299/.365/. 514 for the season. France, who did not become a full-time starter until mid-June, needs 41 plate appearances to qualify for the batting title. His .299 average would rank sixth in the NL if he had enough plate appearances to qualify.
Merrill is batting .500 (18-for-36) during an eight-game hitting streak. He also took over the team RBI lead yesterday with 85, one more than Machado.
Tatis has scored in six straight games, matching the longest such streak in the majors this season. It has been accomplished by six other players, including Merrill.
Tatis also extended his on-base streak to 12 games, during which he is reaching at a .429 clip.
Dustin Harris was 3-for-5 yesterday and is batting .423 (11-for-26) in a career-high seven-game winning streak.
Cronenworth is 10-for-29 (.345) during a seven-game hitting streak.
The Padres’ 52 hits over the past four days were most by any team in a series this season and the most by the Padres in a series since 2022 (at Wrigley Field). The 95 hits between the two teams were also the most combined hits in a series this season.
The Padres won 11 of their 13 games against the Rockies this season. The only time they won more games in a season series against them was when they went 12-7 in 2015. The Padres won the 2025 season series 10-3. The 21-5 (.807) winning percentage is their best ever in a two-year span against any current NL West opponent.
Bogaerts’ home run yesterday was the Padres’ sixth in six games on the first pitch of an at-bat. They had 33 first-pitch home runs in their first 147 games.
Jeff Sanders’ final “Clubhouse Chatter” of the season was a fun one. Check it out (here) to see what Padres players said about which one of them would survive the longest on a desert island.
All right, that’s it for me. Early flight and then a game against the Marlins.
Talk to you tomorrow.