Good morning from St. Petersburg, Fla.,
Maybe yesterday will be tough to come back from. Maybe not.
My game story (here) from yesterday’s 7-6 loss to the Rays focused on Luis Rengifo’s injury, and we will talk more in today’s newsletter about what Rengifo meant to the Padres and how cool it was that he had been the latest in a series of unlikely heroes.
But let’s get right to the bottom line.
The Padres lost a half-game in the standings yesterday.
It wasn’t worse because the lowly Giants split a doubleheader with the Diamondbacks and have split the four games they have played this weekend.
And that’s the thing. There is no predicting this sport.
This is probably going to continue as a rollercoaster for a while.
The Padres were two games out on Aug. 7 and a game up five days later.
That was after a sweep of the Brewers, who have the best record in the major leagues.
The Padres head to Cincinnati tonight, where they will play three games against a team that is eight games under .500 while the Diamondbacks will host the Phillies, who are 16 games above .500.
The Padres could as easily be swept by the Reds as the Diamondbacks could sweep the Phillies. Baseball is cuckoo that way.
That is the point.
Could the Padres losing five of their past six games signal the beginning of a spiral? Absolutely.
Just like their losing eight straight from June 27 through July 4 or dropping five of seven coming out of the All-Star break could have been the beginning of the end.
This is going to be difficult.
The Padres still play the Yankees and Dodgers, have four games at silly Coors Field and finish with three games against the Diamondbacks.
But if the Padres play like they did most of the past two days against the team with MLB’s second-best record, they will be in the race.
Tough break
Rengifo is one of the great stories of this Padres season.
He signed a minor-league contract with the Padres after being released by the Brewers and was called up in early July.
Surprisingly to pretty much everyone but him, after hitting .205 with a .534 OPS in 57 games for the Brewers, Rengifo went on to hit .291 with a .784 OPS in 38 games for the Padres. He played at second and third base and started 21 games in left field, a position at which he had started five times in his previous seven big-league seasons.
Along the way were several big hits, as he became the team’s new spark plug, picking up for Samad Taylor, who was the original spark plug until he went down with an oblique injury.
“He’s a good player,” Xander Bogaerts said of Rengifo yesterday. “He just had a tough time with Milwaukee. He’s had really good seasons, you know, and I think, he was kind of playing like a version of himself once he got here. I mean, I don’t know if he felt comfortable or change of scenery, whatever you want to name it. But he’s been huge. I mean, to be where we are right now, he has a lot to do with that for sure.”
That is pretty much exactly the story.
Rengifo did credit the Padres’ confidence in him, their need for him to play every day and comfortability of the clubhouse for his resurgence.
It was also always clear he loved the game and did not think his excelling here was anything special.
“In my head, I felt comfortable to play ball and knew I could get back to the big leagues,” Rengifo said before a game last week. “I knew what I could do. You wonder. It’s hard when you are a free agent after (being released). I didn’t do the job in Milwaukee. I understand they had to make a decision. The Padres gave me the opportunity to be back in the big leagues. The guys welcomed me here and make me feel good.”
The Padres announced Rengifo’s injury as a sprained right knee. A sprain is a tear of a ligament. Now they will wait for imaging to find out the degree of that sprain and which ligament(s) he tore.
Taylor was removed from Triple-A El Paso’s game on Saturday night and figures to be the replacement for Rengifo.
(Over)Work in progress
Manny Machado needs a break.
But yesterday is why we also have to understand the Padres are in a tough spot when it comes to figuring out how to get him that rest.
I posted a story (here) yesterday shortly before Machado drove in two runs with a single in the seventh inning. He had already hit one single, and he would go on to lead off the ninth inning with a walk that gave the Padres the potential tying run on base.
The man is still dangerous when he’s banged up and running on fumes.
Machado is a fascinating study. He believes whatever talent and savvy he brings is secondary to his ability to be on the field game after game.
Yesterday’s story dove into what is practically Machado’s obsession with durability and had some candid quotes from manager Craig Stammen about how he wished he had handled Machado’s workload better earlier in the season.
France’s fight
Ty France is having an excellent season.
It is not just that he is batting .287 with an .865 OPS and yesterday hit his 19th home run, which is one off his career high, and that yesterday was his eighth home run that tied a game or gave the Padres a lead. (He has four others that got them within a run.)
It is that he is achieving those numbers with at-bats like the one yesterday that resulted in him sending a sinker the other way and over the right field wall to give the Padres a 3-2 lead in the sixth inning.
France began the at-bat against Nick Martinez by pulling a fastball foul. Then he watched a sinker just off the plate before getting badly fooled and being unable to stop his swing on a changeup to fall behind 1-2.
That is where the count stayed, as France was late and fouled off a four-seam fastball up in the zone and on the inner third and late again while fouling off a sinker down in the zone and on the inner third.
Then he sent a sinker up and on the outer third just inside the foul pole and just over the wall.
“I know he likes to mix and use all of his pitches,” France said. “So when I got to two strikes, it was just kind of trying to shorten up and put something in play. He left the fastball up and just put a good swing on it. … I think the couple foul balls in their dugout (on the first base side) showed I was a little late on the fastball. So … that was a good pitch he made. And like I said, when I got to two strikes, it was just trying to battle.”
By the way, the 20 home runs France hit during his All-Star season of 2022 were achieved in 613 plate appearances. He has been to the plate just 400 times in 2026.
Not terrible
The Padres scoring 10 runs in two games is not the way you expected them to lose the first two games of this series.
The offense was coming off three games against the Pirates, in which they faced arguably the toughest 1-2-3 starting pitching punch they had seen in a series this season. And they arrived here with dates against three starters who all ranked among the best in the American League in numerous categories.
The Padres have not been great the past two days. But they have produced at a level that would have been sufficient in many games. They got a bit lucky and made the most of their four hits on Friday. They fought back to take the lead twice yesterday, only to see the lead lost in the next half-inning both times.
They scored four runs (three earned) in 5⅔ innings against Shane McClanahan in Friday’s 9-4 loss. McClanahan had his ERA bumped up from 3.10 to 3.19.
Then came Martinez and his 2.93 ERA. The Padres scored three runs off him, all in the sixth inning.
“I would say OK,” Stammen said when asked to assess the offense in the first two games of the series. “I mean, against great pitching, you’re not going to score every inning, so you try to get as much as you can. … Got three runs on the board against (Martines). We had four against McClanahan. So you put that in a vacuum, yeah, I’ll take that right now, and then play the rest of the game with our bullpen.”
Now comes what is likely the biggest challenge of the weekend.
Drew Rasmussen enters today’s game ranked sixth in the American League in ERA (2.95), third in FIP (2.93) and first in WHIP (0.93).
Questionable
Bradgley Rodriguez had never allowed four baserunners while getting fewer than three outs in 62 career appearances before he did so in yesterday’s seventh inning.
He didn’t get any outs, as his outing ended on the fateful single off the center field wall by Yandy Diaz that cleared the bases and culminated with Rengifo’s injury.
It was surprising that Rodriguez was allowed to face a fourth batter after loading the bases on a walk and two singles at the outset.
Left-hander Adrian Morejón had been warming up since the first batter reached base and appeared to be ready. And Rodriguez was leaving everything up in the zone
“That was the lane that we had set up,” Stammen said. “We had Adrian ready for (Jonathan) Aranda. I guess you could argue could have brought Adrian in a batter early, but we felt like the right-on-right matchup was a good matchup.”
You will generally read here about the reams of information a manager has at his disposal that is exponentially more than what the rest of us know. Usually, when we are worked up about a pitching change not being made (or being made), there is something we are not aware of that at least explains a manager’s thinking.
This one was puzzling.
Good, but …
Dustin Harris has been asked to lay down a sacrifice bunt three times this week.
He has failed twice.
At least on Saturday, he followed his failure with a single, smacking an 0-2 sweeper into left field as the second batter to the plate in the Padres’ three-run seventh inning,
“It’s been part of my game my whole life, so I’ve got to get those down,” Harris said. “That’s inexcusable.”
That is true. While Stammen joked after the game that “the manager needs to stop putting on the bunt,” Harris will undoubtedly be asked to get a runner over again.
In the meantime, he is possibly on his way to becoming the latest solid under-the-radar pickup by the team in 2026.
Harris went 3-for-4 yesterday and is 5-for-10 since being called up on Monday.
Lefty? That’s not right
When I got the first email (of many) regarding my big mistake in yesterday’s newsletter, I figured the sender was wrong.
I always assume I am at fault. My wife has ingrained that in me.
Often, I know the mistake I made before anyone tells me. I sometimes wake up with a gnawing feeling and figure it out.
But this?
Jose Musgrove, a left-hander?
I could not have written that.
Alas, I did.
This deserved its own section. It could not be relegated to a “tidbit.” This sort of idiocy and lousy self-editing had to be owned loudly.
I promise all rights and lefts have been verified today.
Tidbits
The Padres led the final eight innings of Wednesday’s game against the Pirates. That was their only victory in five games this week, and they have not held the lead at the end of an inning in any of the four losses.
Yesterday was the first time since July 23 in Atlanta that the Padres lost a game in which they held a three-run lead.
The four losses in five games is the Padres’ worst stretch that long since the eight-game losing streak that began in late June.
Luis Campusano was 0-for-3 with a walk yesterday. He is batting .281/.390/.459 after going 1-for-20 with six walks over his past eight games.
Even before his homer, France extended his on-base streak to 11 games with a single in the second inning.
Tatis stole his 31st base yesterday, which puts him one away from tying his career high set last season.
All right, that’s it for me.
Talk to you tomorrow.
P.S. I feel like today is a good day to remind you that if you want to read all of our Padres stories, you can do so for $2. That’s $2 for two years. Check out the Labor Day Sale (here). This newsletter is free. But we invest a lot to cover this team, and we could use your support. There, I said it. So please consider subscribing. And thank you to those who already do.