Good morning,
The Padres spent a lot of the season being not nearly as good as they should have been. They had missing pieces and underperforming pieces.
It was frustrating for them and for you.
So enjoy this.
The Padres keep getting better.
They are as complete a team as they have been in 2026.
“Starting pitching is great, relief pitching great, offense clicking,” Michael King said.
That about covers it.
You can read Jeff Sanders’ game story (here) from yesterday’s 8-1 victory, which finished off a sweep of the Twins.
This series was almost inarguably the Padres’ best of the season. Maybe by quite a bit.
They got two quality starts. The bullpen allowed one run in 11⅓ innings.
They hit .289 and got on-base at a .382 clip, the latter their highest mark in any series of at least three games this season. The 21 runs they scored were their most in a three-game series outside the one in Kansas City last month in which they scored 19 runs in the finale. This series was the first one in which they scored at least six runs in every game
They scored four or more runs in an inning in each game against the Twins, the first time they have had innings that big in three consecutive games since July 2025.
All three of the big innings were achieved without home runs. It was walks, hits the other way, taking what they were given by the pitcher, taking advantage of misplays in the field.
The Padres did get a home run in Friday’s game, another Saturday and then three yesterday. But where they had become a little homer dependent and in a series loss to the Mets earlier in the week too often did not come up with the big base hit when needed, they were 11-for-27 with runners in scoring position against the Twins.
“It was a good series for the San Diego Padres,” manager Craig Stammen said. “Not just one individual player or a bunch of individual players, but the entire team, the entire organization; it was just a good, you know, collective way to win a series. It starts with the players doing their job, and the coaches trying to supplement them in that, and the front office helping the coaching staff, and everybody involved, and getting things clicking at the right time. Hopefully that’s a formula that we can use the rest of the season.”
The Padres probably won’t continue playing at quite this level uninterrupted through Sept. 27 and on into October.
But it has been a month of mostly good baseball, and that means it is real. This is who they can be.
The Padres are 21-7 since July 24, the best record in the major leagues in that span.
With their fourth series sweep in that stretch, they matched their season high by climbing back to 11 games over .500 for the first time since May 23.
And that kept them two games ahead of the Diamondbacks in the race for the final National League wild-card spot
Changing of the guard
There will be a news conference today to mark one of the rarest occurrences in Padres history.
José E. Feliciano and Kwanza will be introduced at a 1 p.m. news conference.
They will be just the sixth primary owners the franchise has had.
I spent time with Jones and Feliciano over the weekend and wrote (here) about their unique partnership, their stated commitment to fund payroll at an “ambitious” level, why they felt the Padres were the right team to buy and the kinship they feel with San Diego’s sports history.
Like a Phoenix
Tatis believes the fire refined him.
“It has made me to know myself better, to even put bigger trust on myself and the ability that I have,” he said yesterday. “Building from that.”
His two home runs and two singles yesterday boosted his OPS above .800 (to .814) for the first time this year. It was just the middle of June that he was below .700.
On May 23, his .595 OPS ranked 156th out of 168 qualifying batters. In 79 games since then, his 1.032 OPS ranks fifth in the major leagues.
As recently as June 17, Tatis was considered a below-average offensive performer based on his wRC+. He now ranks 14th in the major leagues.
He stopped fooling around so much with his stance and his hands.
That is when the average began to soar.
Regaining the power took time.
Tatis hit his first home run on May 30. Two on the final day of June gave him five for the season.
As his mechanics remained consistent, he continued to work on altering the angle of his swing.
He started hitting home runs.
He has 17 of them now.
Tatis’ 12 home runs in 34 games since the All-Star break are the most in the major leagues. His 1.097 OPS in that span ranks second in MLB, behind the Athletics’ Shea Langeliers (1.125).
“It’s coming along at the right time, and I couldn’t be more happy for that,” Tatis said. “And that’s what I’m capable of when I’m doing the right things on the baseball field.”
He is, almost unfathomably, considering his home run total until recently, on the verge of his fourth 20/20 season.
Tatis is one of just seven players with at least 17 home runs and 20 stolen bases. With three more home runs, he would join Jackson Merrill in the 20/20 club and make this the first season ever in which more than one Padres player reached both those thresholds.
Getting stronger II
Walker Buehler is throwing harder and having more success than at any point this season.
Yesterday, he turned in his third consecutive quality start, matching his total from his first 23 starts.
Even with a poor start to the season, it is only a three-game skid at the beginning of July that has Buehler’s ERA at a bloated 4.63.
Enhancing the impressiveness of the 32-year-old right-hander’s late-season surge is that he has reached 126⅓ innings, his most in a season since 2021.
Buehler was shut down the following June and underwent his second Tommy John surgery in August 2022.
He returned in May 2024 and posted a 5.38 ERA in 16 starts (75⅓ innings) that season before becoming one of their postseason heroes. He signed with the Red Sox as a free agent before last season and had 5.45 ERA in 22 starts and a relief appearance (112⅓ innings) before being released. He allowed one run in 13⅔ innings with the Phillies at the end of the season.
Buehler signed a minor-league deal with the Padres this season. He and pitching coach Ruben Niebla went to work tweaking Buehler’s grip on a couple of his pitches, making his cutter a more prominent offering, using his sinker a little more and his four-seam fastball a little less and figuring out how to get his body to move better.
The velocity on his four-seamer and sinker remain around 94 mph, same as last season. But that has been creeping up. Yesterday, he averaged 94.9 mph with his sinker and 94.8 with his sinker and hit 94.9 mph on his four-seamer in the sixth inning.
He also threw a first-pitch strike to 17 of the 20 batters he faced.
“I think trust in the elbow and the elbow feeling a lot better,” he said. “I wish I felt about myself the way I do now … right in spring training or right after spring. But I think part of the year is progressing and getting better, and I think as a whole, kind of as an organization, we’ve done a really good job of finding ways to make me comfortable and figure out what works.”
Work, rest
The Padres have had a new “problem” lately.
“The starters have done really well,” Stammen said. “It has limited how many innings the bullpen has pitched here lately, (which is) contrary to what it was not too long ago. And so a lot of guys were very rested.”
One of those was Wandy Peralta, who needed the rest.
Peralta pitched yesterday for the first time in eight days, taking down the seventh and eighth innings while allowing one hit.
The 35-year-old right-hander had an 8.15 ERA over his previous 17 outings and had allowed at least one run in three of those.
The way this series unfolded also made it so the Padres could continue to give Jeremiah Estrada some downtime.
Estrada has just not been the same since returning from the injured list. His velocity is down, his command is erratic, the movement on his pitches is not as sharp.
Estrada was on the IL with knee inflammation, and he is still working back from that while dealing with some mechanical issues and his arm just sort of lagging. He explained last week he is “trying to find that missing screw and tighten it up a little bit.”
Yuki appreciation
Yuki Matsui was showered with “Let’s go, Yuki” chants throughout the game’s final at-bat, which ended with him striking out Josh Bell.
“That was the first time for me,” Matsui said. “That pumped me up.”
Matsui is one of the most likeable players on the team, and he often responds to outs and the end of innings with a childlike joy.
Said Jake Cronenworth: “He should have that treatment all the time when he’s in the game … in a big spot.”
Tidbits
Casey Mize departed the clubhouse at the end of the day in a protective boot but was feeling better a day after spraining his ankle during his start. There is hope he can throw a bullpen as soon as tomorrow. Jeff Sanders was among those who spoke to Mize yesterday and wrote an update (here).
Joe Musgrove is scheduled to start tomorrow at an affiliate the Padres have not announced yet.
Nick Pivetta threw a bullpen yesterday and appears on track to make a rehab start this week. As has been known would happen for a couple weeks, the deadline that turned his player option for 2027 into a team option passed Saturday. Pivetta and the Padres are still hoping he can pitch this season.
Since Merrill’s three-strikeout game on Friday, after which he colorfully proclaimed that he felt good, he has not struck out and has homered in each of the past two games. His 11 home runs since the All-Star break are tied for second most in the major leagues.
Tatis is 12-for-22 (.545) with two doubles and four home runs in a five-game hitting streak.
Cronenworth is reaching base at a .346 clip during a 12-game on-base streak. It is his 13th streak at least that long since he debuted in 2020, second on the team during that span to Manny Machado’s 14.
Machado was 1-for-4 yesterday and is batting .279 with a .380 on-base percentage over the past 11 games. But he continues to struggle in clutch situations. He was 0-for-2 with runners in scoring position yesterday and has one hit in his past 15 at-bats in that circumstance. He is batting .182 (6-for-33) with runners in scoring position since July 17, and three of those hits came in one game.
The Padres turned three double plays yesterday, their second most in a game this season.
The best record over a 28-game span by any Padres team is 22-6, achieved five times. The last of those was in 2024.
Yesterday was the first time the Padres have scored nine or more runs this season without reaching double-digit hits.
The Padres had nine hits yesterday for the 13th time in their past 33 games (55%). They had nine or more hits in 36 of their first 98 games (37%).
All, right that’s it for me. Talk to you tomorrow.