NICK PIVETTA<\/p>\n
Position(s): Right-handed starting pitcher
\nBats \/ Throws: Right \/ Right
\n2026 opening day age: 33
\nHeight \/ Weight: 6-foot-5 \/ 210 pounds
\nHow acquired: Signed as a free agent in February 2025
\nContract status: Will make $19 million in the second year of a four-year, $55 million deal; he will make $14 million in 2027 and $18 million in 2028, although he can opt out after 2026 or 2027.
\nfWAR in 2025: 3.7
\nKey 2025 stats: 13-5, 2.87 ERA, 190 strikeouts, 50 walks, 0.99 WHIP, .195 opponent average, 181\u2154 innings (31 starts)<\/p>\n
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STAT TO NOTE<\/p>\n
2.36 \u2014 Pivetta\u2019s ERA in 17 starts at Petco Park in 2025, the lowest home ERA of his career and more than two runs better than his career ERA at home (4.49). Pivetta\u2019s previous home parks favored hitters \u2014 Fenway Park was the second-best hitting environment over the last three years and Citizens Bank Park was the eighth best \u2014 so moving into a pitching-friendly park like Petco Park (25th out of 28 in Statcast\u2019s Park Factor over the last three years) figured to help Pivetta keep the ball in the park more. And he did. His home run rate (1.1 per nine innings) was the best of his career, the walk rate (2.2 per nine innings) was the second best of his career and that helped Pivetta thrive as he allowed a .503 OPS against hitters at Petco Park, the lowest OPS by hitters at home of his career.<\/p>\n
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TRENDING<\/p>\n
Up \u2014 A member of the Canadian Junior National Team as an amateur, Pivetta was drafted by the Nationals, traded as a minor leaguer to the Phillies and had a 5.50 ERA in four years when he was traded in August 2020 to Boston for Heath Hembree and Brandon Workman. Pivetta was better in five years in Boston (4.29 ERA), but he had never finished a year with an ERA under 4.00, had home run tendencies and had never topped 180 innings in a season. The Red Sox still extended Pivetta a qualifying offer, but he rejected it in hopes of finding some long-term stability and he found it with the Padres just as spring training was getting underway. The signing proved to be a boon for a rotation that lost Joe Musgrove to Tommy John surgery as Pivetta made a favorable home park work to his advantage (see stat to note) during easily the best year of his career. He had a 1.78 ERA through the first month of the season, slowed a bit in May (4.00 ERA) and June (4.71) and then posted a 1.17 ERA in July to generate some All-Star buzz. Pivetta was not selected to the team, but he finished sixth in NL Cy Young voting after posting career bests in wins (13), ERA (2.87), WHIP (0.99) and hit rate (6.4 per nine innings). He was an easy choice to start the Padres\u2019 NL Wild Card Series opener and he did his part in a tough-luck loss, striking out nine over five innings in which he allowed just two solo homers.<\/p>\n
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2026 OUTLOOK<\/p>\n
As far as pitch run value goes, Pivetta\u2019s plus-35 pitch run value as measured by Statcast was better than everyone in the majors outside Tarik Skubal (51), Paul Skenes (42), Yoshinobu Yamamoto (42) and Cristopher Sanchez (37) \u2014 all of whom finished higher than him in Cy Young voting. Recognizing there are better pitchers than him in the game, Pivetta said over the weekend at FanFest that he\u2019s looking to take another step forward. Toward that end, he is skipping representing Canada in the World Baseball Classic<\/a> this spring to focus on building off last year\u2019s success and helping the Padres win a World Series. That said, Pivetta can also opt out of his contract after this season and is a good bet to do so if his 2026 season is a suitable encore to 2025.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ROSTER RANKINGS<\/p>\n 4. RHP Nick Pivetta \t\t\tRevContent Feed\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Padres roster review: Nick Pivetta \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune Skip to content NICK PIVETTA Position(s): Right-handed starting pitcher…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,1334,74,76,75,2611,127],"class_list":{"0":"post-161898","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-latest-headlines","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-san-diego","11":"tag-san-diego-headlines","12":"tag-san-diego-news","13":"tag-san-diego-padres","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Nick](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/SUT-L-padres-0928-032_155634.jpg\")
Nick Pivetta #27 of the San Diego Padres smiles at fans before their game against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Petco Park on Friday, Sept. 26, 2025 in San Diego, California. (Meg McLaughlin \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n
\n5. RHP Michael King
\n6. RHP Mason Miller
\n7. OF Ram\u00f3n Laureano
\n8. SS Xander Bogaerts
\n9. LHP Adri\u00e1n Morej\u00f3n
\n10. RHP Jeremiah Estrada
\n11. RHP Jason Adam
\n12. 2B Jake Cronenworth
\n13. RHP Joe Musgrove
\n14. RHP Randy Vasquez
\n15. OF Gavin Sheets
\n16. LHP JP Sears
\n17. RHP Yu Darvish
\n18. RHP Bradgley Rodriguez
\n19. RHP David Morgan
\n20. C Freddy Fermin
\n21. LHP Wandy Peralta
\n22. C Luis Campusano
\n23. LHP Yuki Matsui
\n24. INF Sung-Mun Song
\n25. RHP Matt Waldron
\n26. OF Bryce Johnson
\n27. RHP Ron Marinaccio
\n28. RHP Bryan Hoeing
\n29. LHP Kyle Hart
\n30. RHP Jhony Brito
\n31. INF Will Wagner
\n32. OF Tirso Ornelas
\n33. RHP Garrett Hawkins
\n34. RHP Miguel Mendez
\n35. RHP Daison Acosta
\n36. RHP Ty Adcock
\n37. RHP Alek Jacob
\n38. INF Mason McCoy<\/p>\n