Good morning from Los Angeles,
What was by some measures the worst loss in 58 years of Padres baseball should not shift the focus from the team’s acute problem in 2026.
But we can talk about the Padres’ starting pitching later.
When a club loses by 20 runs, it deserves a closer look straight away.
As noted in my game story (here) from yesterday’s 23-3 beatdown at Wrigley Field, the Padres had never lost by such a large margin.
The previous worst loss by a Padres team was by 19 runs. That happened three times before, most recently 20-1 in 2005 at Coors Field.
The Padres had allowed 23 runs once before, also at Wrigley Field, in 1977.
The eight home runs the Padres allowed were more than in any game in team history.
The Cubs reached base 24 times (17 hits, seven walks). No team had done that against the Padres since the Diamondbacks reached 26 times on July 7, 2018.
The game story included this analysis from Manny Machado:
“Got our ass spanked.”
Impossible to argue with that.
Machado neither argued nor agreed with the contention the Padres are playing some of their worst baseball of the season over a five-game losing streak.
The reasoning for such an argument lies in these games featuring more mistakes on the basepaths and in the field than were occurring over most of the season’s first three months.
Manager Craig Stammen had no problem with the assessment that things are as rough as at any point in 2026.
“That’s accurate,” he said. “They’re going as poorly as they can right now, and we’ve got to find a way to dig deep, dig our way out of that hole. I think there’s some grit on this team, and we’ve got to dig deep for that, still believe in ourselves, stay positive enough that we will get out of it. If we get negative, we turn on each other, start pointing fingers, that’s when it’ll turn into disaster. And I’m not going to be doing that.”
Sinking feeling
After beating the Dodgers this past Friday, the Padres sat in the fifth of the National League’s six playoff positions.
Five losses later, they are two games out of the final wild-card spot with two teams between them and the sixth seed.
On one hand, the fact there are 77 games remaining makes this sort of standings watching absurd. But that is quite the precipitous drop in five days, and the abundance of teams that are hanging around indicates the challenge ahead.
It is informative that history says the Padres likely need to go 44-33 or better the rest of the way to make the playoffs.
And if they do so, they need to hope the Cardinals, Phillies or Cubs hit at least one rough patch. Because they can’t do anything about those teams’ records.
The Padres are finished playing the three teams that currently hold wild-card spots, and they lost the season series against all three.
One way or another
Every start by Walker Buehler has to be considered from multiple angles — his value to the team if they regain their footing and his value to the team if they continue to stumble.
The former scenario is their preference. The latter is becoming more realistic literally every day.
What happened yesterday underscored the gravity of the situation.
The Padres need Buehler to be what he was in June in order for them to remain a contender. They need him to pitch like he did in June if they become sellers and are effectively forced into trading their prized project of 2026.
Should he pitch anything like he did in yesterday’s 23-3 loss to the Cubs, his value is nil in either scenario.
It is a sad state of affairs to be considering all this.
But those who make such considerations for the Padres would be foolish to not be mapping out both roads. Rest assured, they are doing so.
If you’re angry the Padres are at the point where Buehler’s tradability is being discussed, brace yourself.
They could be a couple weeks away from having to confront the wisdom of trying to turn Mason Miller into some sort of future help.
Unwinnable
That the Padres’ season is slipping into the abyss is not Buehler’s fault. Quite the opposite. He allowed one run in each of his five starts last month. The Padres won the last four of those. They won just seven other times in June.
But his outing yesterday exemplified why the Padres are in such a dire position and why it seems so hopeless.
It was an exaggerated example, in that the nine runs he allowed were more than in any of his previous 162 major league starts and more runs than any Padres starting pitcher had allowed in the team’s previous 280 games.
But Buehler’s struggles worked to illustrate what is broken.
Yesterday was the 10th time in the past 14 games that a member of the Padres rotation failed to complete five innings. It was the fifth time in a row, which means every turn in the rotation has fallen short of the five-inning threshold that signifies the minimum achievement for a satisfactory start.
The league average length of a start is 5.1 innings this season.
Teams were 236-541 entering yesterday’s games when their starting pitcher lasted fewer than five innings. Teams were 247-252 when a starter worked exactly five innings. Teams were 798-488 when a starting pitcher recorded at least one out in the sixth inning.
Here is how often the Padres have done each of those things and where that ranks in the major leagues:
We have been over the rotation situation every day for a while.
I wrote in Monday’s newsletter about how it seems perhaps only a trade deadline rotation remodel can keep this from being a repeat of 2021. Nothing has changed.
The Padres announced their probable starters for the next four games against the Dodgers as Randy Vásquez, Michael King, Griffin Canning and JP Sears.
It would be a surprise if there is not at least one tweak to that, be it in the form of a piggyback, an opener and/or a completely different starter for one of the games.
When it matters
The Cubs led 4-0 and Colin Rea, their starting pitcher, was clearly struggling with his command when yesterday’s third inning began with Sung-Mun Song lined a double to right field.
That is when one of the Padres’ biggest recent failings tripped them again.
Fernando Tatis Jr. flied out. Gavin Sheets was hit by a pitch. Machado flied out. Ty France was hit by a pitch. Jackson Merrill grounded out.
It was the ninth inning in the past six games that the Padres had a runner in scoring position with no outs and the sixth time they failed to score. That 33% conversion rate is about half the league average.
The Padres’ offense has, on the whole, been much better the past three weeks.
And going back two weeks (13 games), they have the major leagues’ eighth-highest batting average (.271) and eighth-highest OPS (.813).
That has resulted in them getting 130 at-bats with runners in scoring position, third most in the majors in that span. But they are batting just .262 with runners in scoring position over the 13 games.
That is 13th in MLB. And their 4.5 runs per game in that span ranks 16th in MLB.
All that is still good enough for them to be significantly better than 6-7 if it were not for the starting pitchers having a 5.65 ERA (27th) in the 13 games.
Hit and hit
France continued to hit. And to be hit.
He adjusted his hands, which he found out he had been holding too close to his body, about two weeks ago. That has helped him go 13-for-33 (.394) with three doubles and four home runs over his past 11 games.
Opposing pitchers are taking care of the other hits.
France was 2-for-4 with a double and was hit by a pitch yesterday.
He has been hit in four of the past five games.
That is not all that surprising, in that France entered the season having been hit by an MLB-high 126 pitches from 2019 through ‘25. But he was hit just twice in his first 57 games this season.
Said France: “It was a weird start to the year.”
Song catching on
When given the opportunity, Song has begun to show what the Padres saw when they signed him in December and guaranteed him $15 million over four seasons.
“He has been trending in the right direction here as he’s gotten a little bit more playing time,” Stammen said.
Song hit his first major league home run in addition to his double yesterday, raising his hitting line to .323/.400/.484 over his past 14 games and .214/.327/.333 for the season.
Song was called up May 5 and started nine times in the first 27 games he was with the Padres. He has started nine of the past 24 games.
“Our team is a good team,” Song said. “We have good guys on the field already. I came here as a backup player, so I know that role, and I’m trying to be best in that role. If I get an opportunity, I want to get great at-bats and play good. For now, this is fun.”
Called up when Jake Cronenworth went on the injured list, Song made 13 of his first 17 starts at second base. With Cronenworth’s return this week, Song’s playing time will likely come mostly at shortstop and third base when Xander Bogaerts and Machado get days off their feet.
Yesterday was Song’s first start at third base, the position he played almost exclusively in Korea, while Machado served as the Padres’ designated hitter.
Tidbits
Tatis’ on-base streak ended at 23 games, which was tied for the longest in his career. Tatis went 0-for-4 yesterday before being replaced by Jase Bowen in right field in the bottom of the sixth inning.
Merrill is hitless in his past 10 at-bats with runners in scoring position.
Samad Taylor took Merrill’s spot in the order when he entered the game in right field in the seventh inning. Taylor led off the eighth inning with a triple and scored the Padres’ final run.
Cronenworth was 3-for-4 in his second start since coming off the concussion IL.
All right, that’s it for me.
Talk to you tomorrow.