Michael King was clearly frustrated even when he was throwing enough strikes to make it seem Sunday would be one of those days he survived and possibly thrived.
Then the misses got bigger and more frequent, and another day ended sooner than it should have for a Padres starting pitcher.
A three-run fifth inning helped lift the Dodgers to a 4-2 victory at Petco Park while King’s early exit increased that sinking feeling the Padres’ season will eventually circle the drain.
The Padres had chances to get closer, including in the final two innings, which ended on groundball double plays. But both losses in the three-game series could be largely attributed to an ineffective outing by a member of the Padres’ starting rotation, a theme that has taken over a campaign that is just past the halfway point.
The offense is heating up. The bullpen has been almost steadfastly dependable.
The starting rotation was thinned at the start by injuries and has withered throughout.
It is ominously reminiscent of 2021, when a decimated rotation simply ran out of bodies and the Padres plummeted from securely in playoff position in mid-August to well out of contention as a strong bullpen was beaten down.
“My biggest worry, because I lived it,” said Padres manager Craig Stammen, who was a reliever on that team. “I know what that was like, and I know how (relievers) were feeling at the end of the season. We felt good, but it just wasn’t the same. My job as a manager is to try to protect the bullpen in that way, so that they are a strength for the entire season, not just in May and June.”
Sunday’s 4⅓ innings by King, the Padres’ de facto No.1 starter, made it two nights in a row and seven times in 11 games that a member of the Padres’ starting rotation failed to complete five innings.
That includes those erstwhile starting pitchers who have worked after an opener, which in itself is an indication of the rotation’s shabby state.
It could be considered a poor stretch if not for the sad statistics that litter almost the entire season.
Just four teams have gotten fewer innings from their starting pitchers. Just two have had their starting pitcher work more than five innings fewer times than the Padres (30). Only the Rockies (12) have fewer quality starts than the Padres’ 15.
And if they can’t count on King, who has nearly half (seven) of those quality starts, the road is likely only going to become more pockmarked with disappointment.
Arguably as disconcerting as any of their starting pitching struggles is the ongoing inability of King to find the consistent feel for his pitches. That is keeping him from being the dominant starter he was for large stretches in 2024.
Where he has worked through not being at his best multiple times to keep the Padres in games, he could not overcome a sudden drastic loss of command Sunday.
He threw 31 strikes among his 44 pitches in the first three innings. Among his remaining 46 pitches, 23 were strikes.
“He just kind of lost the strike zone there,” Stammen said. “We’ve seen bouts of that from Michael throughout this season. He just wasn’t really able to rein it in.”
The Dodgers scored a run in the third inning on a single by Kyle Freeland, a sacrifice bunt by Chuckie Robinson and a single by Shohei Ohtani. That was not the issue.
Manny Machado’s solo home run off Dodgers starter Emmet Sheehan tied the game 1-1 in the fourth.
Sunday was the second straight game the Padres were undone by a big inning immediately after they had gotten even at 1-1.
It wasn’t the nine-run avalanche that buried them Saturday when the Dodgers piled hit after hit on Randy Vásquez in the sixth inning.
The Padres were on Sunday instead washed away by wildness, as King began to spray sinkers and sweepers way wide of the plate on his arm side (outside to left-handers).
“Mechanical breakdown,” King said. “I felt it a little bit in the fourth, tried to correct it in the fifth and probably did the wrong thing. So, yeah, I gotta do a little dive into that and see where I went wrong.”
A leadoff walk and then a one-out walk, hit batter and a nine-pitch walk worked by Freddie Freeman brought in a run. King and catcher Rodolfo Durán were kicking themselves afterward for not challenging what appeared to be a strike on the final pitch to Freeman.
Mookie Betts’ followed with a one-out single that made it 4-1 and ended King’s day.
Yuki Matsui got the final two outs in the fifth and got through the sixth before Jason Adam worked the seventh and Wandy Peralta the eighth and ninth to keep the Padres in it.
They got to 4-2 in the sixth when Jackson Merrill led off with a single against Alex Vesia, stole second and scored on Xander Bogaerts’ two-out single off Will Klein. Bogaerts got to second when Miguel Andujar was hit by a pitch. But Klein finished off the inning by striking out Sung-Mun Song.
Machado led off the eighth with a double, and pinch-hitter Ty France reached base when a fastball from Tanner Scott skimmed his arm. That threat ended when Bogaerts struck out and Miguel Andujar grounded into his team-leading ninth double play.
The game ended on a double-play grounder by Fernando Tatis Jr. after Freddy Fermin drew a one-out walk.
That also completed a six-game homestand in which the Padres swept three games from the National League East-leading Braves and won the opener against the NL West-leading Dodgers before losing 15-3 on Saturday and then dropping Sunday’s game.
“We lost the series,” Stammen said. “That’s the bottom line. We played some solid baseball throughout it, but in the end lost two out of three. … Overall, we played the Braves really good. Get a sweep against a good team. Played the Dodgers, beat them the first game, have some momentum. Yesterday’s game gets away from us. We came up today, played pretty hard. Two-run ball game, had chances throughout the game.”