Good morning from my layover,

Whatever warts, whatever flaws, whatever warning signs that could be gleaned from what happened yesterday, the Padres were resilient.

They did not let a brutal loss on Saturday carry over.

They could have/should have won.

That says something. And we can talk about that.

But it is also true that the Padres blew it. They are not going to the playoffs if they don’t tighten up their act.

There were some bad breaks and strange plays.

Two days after they made an out on a ball that would have been a home run in all but the ballpark they were playing in, they had a home run hit against them that would have been an out in all but the ballpark they were playing in.

Tough luck.

But good teams create good luck.

You can read my game story (here) about yesterday’s 5-4 loss to the Rays, in which the Padres were walked off in the 11th inning, two innings after a game-tying homer with two outs went in and out of Samad Taylor’s glove.

It was a stunning and unfortunate way for an apparent win to turn into a tie game.

But it was just part of the story.

The Padres put on a bad baseball clinic and got just two batters to the plate in the top of the 10th. Xander Bogaerts made an error that allowed the tying run to score in the 11th. While it must be noted that Jonny DeLuca’s game-tying homer traveled just 319 feet, Miller still hung a slider that got hit out. Fernando Tatis Jr. was ejected in the seventh inning, which meant he did not get a chance to bat in the ninth inning, not to mention Jase Bowen having to replace him in right field might have been the deciding factor in Taylor still playing left field in the ninth.

There were pivotal plays the Padres could have made in the other two losses, too.

As it is, the Padres lost two games in the standings over the past three days.

All they can do now is play better for nine innings (or 11, if so required). Because, again, they did a lot of things right in this series.

It was intense. It was exciting. At times, it was excellent baseball all around.

“I mean, the atmosphere was incredible,” DeLuca said. “The games were tight all the way down to the end. This is a series we can point to and tell our guys who haven’t experienced postseason baseball, ‘Every day is like this.’ It’s a roller coaster ride. Games are close, and you win on the margins.”

Yep.

The Padres know that. They have been the ones doing it the past few years.

They got margined to death by the Rays this weekend.

“Things didn’t go our way this series,” manager Craig Stammen said. “… But we’ve got a lot of games ahead of us. We’ve got a series in Cincinnati ahead of us, so we have a chance. Everything that we’ve desired about this season is still in front of us.”

The Padres have shown they can be a good team.

Are they a good team? Will they be remembered as one?

We’ll find out beginning today.

This is the kind of series a team bound for the playoffs has to win.

(OK, they don’t have to. They could lose two of three while the Diamondbacks lose two of three to the Phillies. But that would be a horrible waste, now, wouldn’t it?)

“Going into September, it’s that time of year where you’ve got to lock it in and focus, and go out and play your best baseball,” Ty France said. “I think everyone understands that and knows we need to do that.”

Fired up

Tatis was as mad yesterday as anyone with the Padres could remember him being on a field.

HIs tirade after he was called out on runner interference in the seventh inning culminated in his being ejected after hurling his helmet to the turf as he walked away from umpires.

And he was only slightly less peeved a little more than an hour later.

“It’s a rule that was made (by) somebody that has not played the game,” he said. “… I was right, like, the line is on the grass. Like, there’s no dirt. Obviously, it’s their call. Obviously, I was heated. Obviously, I didn’t want that call. Yeah, it was tough. I just got hot.”

About the play:

Tatis Jr. and Stammen were ejected following this play.pic.twitter.com/N7iJ2dAbIJ https://t.co/sGS5Qkuk6I

— Underdog MLB (@UnderdogMLB) August 30, 2026

Tatis laid down a bunt in front of the plate, slightly to the first base side that left-handed pitcher Cam Boozer fielded and turned to throw. Tatis had run along the turf, about six inches inside the base line but had made a diagonal cut toward first base and was even with the line when Boozer’s low throw passed him and rolled down the line.

Enforcement of the interference rule is almost always controversial, as a runner is technically required to run in the lane in foul territory on such a play and is called out if it is determined he interfered with a catch being made at first base. (Among the problems with running in the runner’s lane is that staying in it would mean missing the base.)

“It’s one of the rules that we all know is not perfect,” said Stammen, who was ejected after Tatis. “It’s hard to umpire that rule also. … I think, in general, baseball has got to figure out a way to make that play a little bit more umpired correctly in the way that — does the runner running where the base is really affect the throw, and is that an advantage of the hitter or is that a disadvantage of the pitcher? I think from my perspective, if you’re running at the base straight on and the throw doesn’t touch you, it didn’t really affect the play. It was a bad play by the pitcher, and he gets off scot-free because of that. But that is my opinion, and (those) are not the rules of baseball. And anytime that you’re in the grass, the umpires have the opportunity to call you out for it, and that’s what they decided today.”

Tatis initially was escorted by teammates and coaches away from the umpires congregating on the infield as Stammen argued the call with home plate umpire Tyler Jones. Even as he was departing, he continued to protest and fired his batting gloves to the ground and then his helmet.

“At that point, he’s not interacting with the umpires at all,” Stammen said. “He’s off to the side, and the only reason that they’re throwing him out is because they’re staring at him. So they’re looking for something to toss him for. I even said to the umpire, ‘Give him an equipment fine, don’t toss him.’ And they say, ‘Cuss word and you’ and you’re gone. And to me, that’s not them holding their cool.”

Tatis said he did not think his vocabulary was an issue. He explained his anger as passion and expressed disappointment at the umpires’ lack of communication.

“A base hit (was) taken off,” he said. “As a player and as a guy that plays every single day and knows how hard this (expletive) game is … it should get you hot, because you definitely care and you want to do what’s good for the team.

“And they didn’t care to explain. They didn’t care even to give me the face (time). And I feel like I have played this game for a very long time, and I should deserve some answers.”

Tatis was replaced in right field by Bowen.

That meant it was Bowen who went to the plate with two men on and two out in the ninth inning and struck out. And it took away the possibility for the Padres to insert Bowen in left field, which Stammen said they might have done had Tatis not been ejected.

There is a good argument to be made that Bowen, who is even faster than Taylor and four inches taller and with longer arms, would have made the catch in left field that Taylor could not. Stammen indicated that a determination about their defensive plans had not been made at the time Tatis was ejected, but he did point out the Padres had not inserted a defensive replacement for Taylor in any previous game.

Unicorn

DeLuca’s home run, in a ballpark where it is 315 feet down the line to a five-foot wall, left his bat at 90.7 mph, making it the 25th-hardest ball hit fair in yesterday’s game. At 319 feet, it was the shortest home run to clear a wall in any ballpark this season. There had never been a home run hit that high (40 degree launch angle) and that softly in the Statcast era (since 2015).

The unique nature of the homer left Miller torn about the 0-1 slider he left up and in to DeLuca after throwing him a slider at the top of the zone and over the middle on the previous pitch.

“You look at what you can control, and you can control making a better pitch,” Miller said. “So, you know, I mean, probably go back and watch video, and I’ve see that pitch taken or fouled off plenty of times this year. Could have happened anywhere, any game, any time, but it happened here. … I threw him a slider 0-0, and then give him another pitch out of that same tunnel. So it gave him a chance to get a swing off on it. And, you know, as far as pitches go that you can get in the air, the kid didn’t hit it 400 feet. If it’s not a home run, I think we’re having a different conversation. So I think just look at what you can do, and that’s get the slider where you’re trying to go. Execute it down and away, or at least away.”

Ball goes into Samad Taylor’s glove and over the wall for a Jonny Deluca two-run home run off of Mason Miller to tie the game! pic.twitter.com/6IvLbB8B7E

— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) August 30, 2026

Extra bad

The Padres’ half of the 10th inning was … well … it was just awful.

Jake Cronenworth popped up his bunt attempt at the start. Then Bowen, the automatic runner, was thrown out trying to steal third. And Manny Machado watched four pitches in an inning-ending strikeout.

The Padres have played five extra innings this week and popped up three bunts. Cronenworth has done it twice.

The merits of trying to move a runner via a sacrifice bunt as the visiting team in extra innings are debatable anyway. Giving up an out decreases the chances of scoring multiple runs, which is often what it takes to win, given that the home team has yet to bat and can relatively easily match one run.

“The extra innings rules put a lot of pressure on you to try to do some things a little bit differently, and maybe we’ve got to come up with a little bit different strategy or we’ve got to get better at some of those skills,” Stammen said. “We’re going to learn from our mistakes, try to correct it, work on it, get better at it, and then hopefully be better at it the next time.”

Sheets down

Gavin Sheets had been able to manage the discomfort caused by his plantar fasciitis, at least enough to play.

But then he made a sudden stop to avoid a collision at first base on Saturday, and the hurt was instantly worse.

So after playing through pain since at least mid-July, Sheets went on the injured list yesterday.

“I told them I would go until I couldn’t, and they were awesome about it,” Sheets said. “Just unfortunate. This is the time of year that you play for, meaningful games and important games. It sucks. …

Sheets was in a deep skid at the plate, having seen his OPS drop from .787 to .701 since July 4.

Sung-Mun Song was called up to replace Sheets on the roster. He was on the same 5 a.m. flight from Oklahoma City as Taylor, and they arrived at Tropicana Field about two hours before first pitch. Song started at third base.

Up and down

Yesterday had been a productive day for Taylor until the ninth inning.

He entered the game as a pinch-hitter in the seventh inning and laid down his team-leading fourth bunt hit on the first pitch he saw.

Taylor then appeared to be picked off at first base but instead ended up running to third when the pickoff throw got away. He later scored on Sung-Mun Song’s sacrifice fly.

It was as if Taylor picked up where he left off before going on the IL July 8 with an oblique strain.

When Tayor went down, he was replaced by Luis Rengifo, who suffered a knee injury Saturday. Taylor returned yesterday to take Rengifo’s spot.

Tidbits

The Padres scored at least four runs in all three games against the Rays. It is the first time since July 15-16, 2023, that they have lost three consecutive games in which they scored at least four runs.
Jeff Sanders wrote (here) about what seemed to be a solid rehab start by Nick Pivetta last night for Triple-A El Paso.
Joe Musgrove will pitch once more in the minor leagues this week before likely rejoining the Padres and making his season debut during the team’s next homestand. Musgrove, who has not pitched in the major leagues since having Tommy John surgery in October 2024, wants to be a little sharper and certain he can bounce back and pitch at a high level every five or six days once he returns.
Miller has allowed runs in consecutive appearances for the first time since joining the Padres last July 31. He has surrendered a home run in consecutive outings for just the second time in 180 career games. The other time was May 30 and June 5, 2024.
Machado served as the Padres’ designated hitter for the 16th time this season, twice more than he did all of 2025. I wrote Saturday (here) about Machado’s workload.
Machado went 1-for-4 with a walk and is 3-for-8 with two walks over the past two games. This is  his first time hitting safely in consecutive games since hitting in three straight from Aug. 7 to 9. He had hit .210 (13-for-62) with a .310 on-base percentage in 16 games between then and Saturday.
Machado has one extra-base hit in his past 23 games, his fewest ever in a span that long.
Tatis was 0-for-4 yesterday and is 3-for-26 (.115) over his past six games. In the 33 games before this skid, he hit .317 with a 1.095 OPS.
Yesterday was one of the games where Tatis’ penchant for swinging at the first pitch looks really bad. He saw six pitches, tying his season low for a game in which he had at least four plate appearances. (There was actually a game, on July 28, 2019, that Tatis saw five pitches in four trips to the plate. He went 2-for-3 and was hit by a pitch that day.) Tatis is batting .376 with a .954 OPS when he puts the first pitch of an at-bat in play this season. It is his third-highest batting average in any count and fourth-highest OPS in any count. Interestingly, Tatis entered yesterday with the same batting average (.284) whether he took or swung at the first pitch in a plate appearance, but his on-base and slugging percentages are significantly higher when he takes the first pitch.
France was 1-for-3 with a walk yesterday and is batting .256 (10-for-39) with a .415 on-base percentage during a 12-game on-base streak.
Freddy Fermin threw out two runners trying to steal yesterday and has thrown out an MLB-high 20 would-be base stealers this season. His 31.7% caught-stealing rate is second to the Brewers’ William Contreras (35.4%) among catchers who have faced at least 60 attempts.
Padres catchers were hot at the plate. Now they are not. Fermin was 0-for-4 yesterday and is batting .194 (6-for-31) over his past 11 games. Luis Campusano is batting .050 (1-for-20) with six walks over his past eight games.
Dustin Harris was 1-for-2 yesterday and is 6-for-12 in his four starts with the Padres.
The Padres scored in eight different innings in the series against the Rays. The Rays scored at least one run in the bottom of seven of those innings.
The Padres have lost their past five games that have been decided by one run. They are now 19-21 in such games this season.

All right, that’s it for me.

Talk to you tomorrow.