Good morning,
It’s over.
Oh, wait. I just meant the road trip. It was really long. Baltimore, St. Louis, Dallas. Humidity, losing. Did I mention St. Louis? It felt much longer than 11 days.
Sorry. Did you think that meant the Padres’ season?
No, no. It’s not over. Not quite.
If they do not find some starting pitching, it will be over sooner than later.
You can read in my game story (here) about how Lucas Giolito had another rough outing in yesterday’s 4-3 loss to the Rangers.
Yes, he was the bulk reliever yesterday after Wandy Peralta opened for him. But Giolito is a starting pitcher. The fact the Padres used an opener his past two turns in the rotation and for Griffin Canning’s last turn only highlights the reality the rotation is in shambles.
Is that an exaggeration? No. It might not be a permanent condition, but the starting rotation is absolutely a wreck right now.
As I wrote in yesterday’s newsletter, Walker Buehler is the only starter consistently putting the Padres in position to win over the past several weeks.
Here are Buehler’s past four starts:
In 13 other games since June 3, just one other Padres starter has gone at least 4⅓ innings while allowing no more than one run. (That was Canning, who allowed the Mets one run in five innings on June 6.)
Buehler has a 2.76 ERA over his past eight starts. He has gone at least five innings and allowed no more than two runs six times in that span. (He allowed three runs in five innings and one run in 4⅔ innings in the other two starts.)
In 29 other games since May 10, every other starter has combined for six total games in which they went at least five innings and allowed no more than two runs.
So, by the measure of putting his team in a position to win, Buehler is far and away the Padres’ best starter.
And he has completed six innings three times this season. That is not an ace by any stretch of anyone’s imagination.
Now, his not being allowed to at least try to go longer owes in part to the fact the Padres are hardly scoring in Buehler’s starts. He likely would have been given a longer leash at least a few times recently if he were not pitching with no margin for error in the fifth or sixth inning.
The 3.4 runs per 27 outs the Padres are scoring while their starters are in games is lowest in the major leagues.
Hand in hand
The offense does not get a pass.
My game story focused on the problem the Padres have not only with their starting pitchers but with opposing starting pitchers.
That story included the stunning fact that Padres starters have departed 21 of the past 25 games with the Padres tied or trailing. That is the doing of both the Padres pitcher and the Padres hitters. In just five of those 25 games have the Padres scored more than two runs while their starting pitcher was still working.
Yesterday was the 38th quality start thrown against the Padres. That means the opposing starter has gone at least six innings and allowed three or fewer earned runs in exactly half of the Padres’ games. (But it’s worse than that, since opponents have used an opener against the Padres six times.)
It was Nathan Eovaldi who went six innings and allowed three runs yesterday, all of them in the fourth inning.
Eovaldi is an accomplished pitcher. But he came into the game with a 4.23 ERA this season.
I have written plenty about the preponderance of top-flight starting pitchers the Padres have faced. But they are also making some pitchers look better than they are.
During this run of 25 games in which the Padres are an MLB-worst 7-18, they have faced 12 pitchers (in 13 games) who took the mound against them with an ERA of 4.06 or higher. In those 13 games, there have been 10 quality starts, and those 12 pitchers have combined for a 3.23 ERA.
So while the offense is trending up, there is much to be desired. Especially early in games.
The Padres have .715 OPS against relief pitchers, which is 17th in the majors. Their .614 OPS against starters is — you guessed it — worst in the majors by a lot.
So now what?
The Padres do not have time to wait for Joe Musgrove and Nick Pivetta, who are making progress but are not going to be back before late July at the earliest and probably not until August or beyond.
They will probably give Jhony Brito a try in short order. Matt Waldron is a few weeks away. Neither will be counted on as anything more than fill-ins.
There will almost certainly not be a top-flight starting pitcher or probably even a middling starter available via trade for at least a few weeks. More teams need time to figure out if they are buyers or sellers.
What the Padres have to hope above all else is that Michael King and Randy Vásquez can find their top form, Buehler can keep pitching like he has been (or better) and whoever else is in the rotation can be more competitive.
“We believe that our starting pitching will get better,” manager Craig Stammen said yesterday.
That doesn’t really mean anything. But he said it, and he meant it. And the fact is, he better be right.
Tatis’ rest
The Padres played without their best hitter until almost the end of yesterday’s game.
There is no truly optimal time for Fernando Tatis Jr. to rest when he is hitting like he has been for going on a month. But the Padres waited as long as they felt they could.
“He’s been playing for a while,” Stammen said.
Tatis had started 43 consecutive games (over 48 days). One thing that got in the way of his getting a rest in early June was that he had gotten hot at the plate. Including yesterday’s pinch-hit single in the ninth inning, he is batting .369/.405/.505 in 25 games since May 24.
“It’s been a running joke between he and I about getting him an off day,” Stammen said. “It (started) right when he started swinging it a little bit better, and we were kind of like, ‘All right, let’s keep it going, ride this hot streak out a little bit.’ “
The intention was that Tatis would rest one of the games against the Reds before the just-completed road trip began. But that is when Xander Bogaerts’ wife gave birth, and Bogaerts went on paternity leave.
So Tatis played on.
“It was a good day for him to get some time off, and then he got a base hit,” Stammen said. “So a good off day for him.”
Hitting send
The Padres had a runner thrown out at home during their three-run fourth inning.
With Manny Machado on third and Gavin Sheets on second, Bogaerts hit a single that rolled under the dive of Rangers shortstop Ezequiel Durán. That easily scored Machado from third, but the location of the hit froze Sheets and actually sent him back toward second before he saw the ball roll into the outfield.
At that, Sheets took off for third. He was still eight to 10 feet from rounding third when center fielder Wyatt Langford fielded the ball. But with Langford’s momentum taking him toward left field, Henley waved Sheets home.
Langford made a fairly soft throw across his body to Durán, who turned and threw home, where the ball skipped just in front of catcher Kyle Higashioka, who in essentially one motion caught the ball and swiped a tag onto Sheets’ leg just in front of the plate.
Xander Bogaerts’ RBI single
Padres @ Rangers#MLB #ForTheFaithful pic.twitter.com/kPlJVrGOVm
— San Diego Strong (@PadresStrong) June 21, 2026
“He went back a little bit, stutter stepped,” Stammen said of Sheets. “The outfielder was definitely off. He wasn’t coming straight in, he was going to (the left). The shortstop didn’t look like he was totally lined up and ready to throw home, and I think that’s what Bobby saw too. And Gavin had to get started again and get going, and they made a perfect throw and Higgy made an unbelievable pick of the ball.
“You know, if that ball rattles around his glove at all, a little bit — he took a once-in-a-lifetime chance. … You try to pick that and get it. If you miss it, he’s safe. So those are the chances we take throughout the game. You can always look — we lost by one run — and say that was the game right there. But that was early enough in the game where we were willing to be aggressive and take chances.”
Had he known the Padres were going to get two more hits, including a double by Sung-Mun Song that scored Bogaerts, Henley could have made a different decision.
Adam working
Jason Adam hung his head as he watched a two-run homer clear the wall in right-center field in Saturday’s seventh inning.
He had left a fastball up and too far out over the plate for Jake Burger, who walloped it to the Rangers’ bullpen beyond right-center field.
“I felt good,” Adam said. “I felt like the fastball was true, all the off speed was good. … I just put a fastball in a bad spot at a bad time to a hitter that got it done.”
Such is the life of a relief pitcher who is attempting to work through mechanical issues while trying to get outs in games that matter.
For a pitcher who entered Saturday’s game with a 1.98 ERA, Adam has had a tough time navigating many of his 32 outings.
It is somewhat remarkable he has been as effective as he has been serving as one of the Padres’ higher-leverage relievers.
Saturday was just the sixth time he has surrendered a run, but he has allowed at least one baserunner in 26 of his appearances, including each of the past 12.
The traffic has finally caught up with him, as he has allowed runs in four of his past nine appearances. He had allowed a run in just two of his first 21 games.
“I started off with a lot of zeros, but honestly, the stuff was kind of trash,” Adam said. “So it was a battle. I feel like we’re getting past that — kind of cleaning up the mechanical movement. So now we can just go out and compete, focus on executing pitches. Stuff will continue to take up as you do that. The more mechanically you think, it’s harder to pitch that way, but it was a necessary evil for a little bit.”
Some of the issue for Adam stems from his adjusting how he moved during his delivery while trying to find more velocity as he worked back from the quad tendon surgery he underwent last September.
“There has just been a lot of inconsistencies with his repeatability,” pitching coach Rubed Niebla said. “We’ve found some things, pinpointed some things. But he hasn’t been able to consistently repeat it.”
Adam is not getting nearly as many misses this season. That is especially true for his fastball, which is down more than 1 mph (from an average of 94.6 mph to 93.4 mph) compared to last season.
“I feel like we’re getting there,” Adam said. “These changes, one game you feel great, the next game they feel not quite as good. But the trend is up. So I feel like I’m starting to get to where I can shift out of the mechanical mindset, which is good. But I’m just ready to compete and put up zeroes for the boys.”
Little more, little better
Song went 2-for-4 in his first major league start on May 5 and then 2-for-25 over his next 17 games.
Those 17 games included nine starts between May 6 and June 5.
In his seven games (five starts) since June 6, Song is 6-for-21.
“I’ve been playing regularly a couple games in a row, so it helps a lot,” Song said last week through interpreter Juneseo Yi. “… I know my balance. Whenever I was hitting good back in Korea, I know that. So I’m trying to get that balance in practice. I’m a slow starter, even in Korea. So that process, not playing every day and not getting as many at-bats as in Korea, that’s definitely the difference.”
By going 1-for-4 yesterday, Song got his batting average up to .200 for the season.
Andujar returns
The Padres activated Miguel Andujar yesterday after he spent the minimum 10 days on the injured list with a strained left hamstring.
Andujar did not start, as the Padres chose to go with left-handed hitter Will Wagner as the designated hitter against the right-handed Eovaldi. Andujar pinch-hit for Wagner in the eighth inning and grounded into his team-leading seventh double play.
Nick Solak, who was called up when Andujar went on the IL, was designated for assignment.
Tidbits
Catcher Freddy Fermin flew to meet the Padres in Texas and worked out at Globe Life Field yesterday. It would be surprising if he is not activated off the seven-day concussion injured list today.
Samad Taylor led off yesterday’s game with a single grounded through the middle of the infield and finished 1-for-4. He has hit in all 12 games he has started. His 12-game hitting streak, during which he is batting .378 (17-for-45), is the longest by a Padres player this season.
Bogaerts is 5-for-14 with three walks and has been hit by a pitch over the past four games. He has raised his batting average seven points (to .229) and his OBP 13 points (to .314) in that time. The two multi-hit games he has in the past four games are as many as he had in the previous 25 games.
Tatis is 5-for-9 as a pinch-hitter in his career.
Manny Machado was 1-for-3 with a walk yesterday. He is batting .250 (11-for-44) with an .829 OPS over his past 11 games. His .179 batting average remains the lowest among 155 qualifying batters, and his .259 OBP is better than only the Royals’ Salvador Perez (.252).
Jackson Merrill stole his 15th base in 16 attempts. With one more steal, he will match his total from his rookie season in 2024. Yesterday’s newsletter explained why he had just one steal last season.
Peralta has not allowed a run in nine appearances (11⅓ innings) in June. The two runs he allowed on May 30 were the only runs he allowed in 10 appearances (13 innings) last month.
All right, that’s it for me.
Talk to you tomorrow.