the Juan Soto trade in December 2023<\/a>, V\u00e1squez has been best characterized by his ability to get out of frequent jams. He has been good enough to make 46 starts, including the 26 he made while spending most of \u201825 in the major leagues and posting a 3.84 ERA over 133\u2154 innings.<\/p>\nNo pitcher who threw at least 130 innings in 2025 yielded a higher contact rate than V\u00e1squez\u2019s 85.4%, but the uptick in the fastball helped him get more misses on swings late in the season. It would follow that more consistent velocity in \u201826 should help him get more strikeouts and cut down on his baserunners.<\/p>\n
Padres manager Craig Stammen has been complimentary of V\u00e1squez all spring but had somewhat surprisingly not included him among the starters who are assured a job at the start of the season. The omission was not accidental.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, he\u2019s right there,\u201d Stammen said Sunday afternoon. \u201c\u2026 We told him he\u2019s coming in to compete. I like what we see when we tell Randy he\u2019s got to compete. And you find out a little bit about somebody when something is not handed to them. We love Randy. The level we\u2019re seeing so far this spring training, what we (saw in) the offseason, he\u2019s gonna have a great season for us this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Matsui announcement expected soon<\/p>\n
The Padres are optimistic left-hander Yuki Matsui\u2019s adductor (groin) strain will not prevent him from being ready for the start of the season.<\/p>\n
And they do expect he will spend the entirety of spring training in Arizona trying to get ready for opening day.<\/p>\n
The Padres are waiting for Team Japan to announce that Matsui will not play in the World Baseball Classic. That announcement is expected by Tuesday (Wednesday in Japan).<\/p>\n
Fostering family<\/p>\n
Stammen declared at the news conference announcing his hiring as manager that the Padres would be a family and indicated players\u2019 and coaches\u2019 kids would be around Petco Park during the season more than ever before.<\/p>\n
\u201cFamily is a big part of who I am and what I believe in,\u201d Stammen said that day. \u201c\u2026 I hope to bring that type of culture to the team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even before Sunday\u2019s official Family Day, in which players and coaches brought their families to play on the main practice field in place of morning workouts, the Padres had already had two days this spring in which kids were abundant.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want it to feel like when they come to the Peoria Sports Complex or Petco Park or wherever we\u2019re playing that they\u2019re going to their family, whether that\u2019s their immediate family with them or the people that we have in the locker room feeling like family,\u201d Stammen said Sunday. \u201cAnd so the more that we create opportunities for that to be the normal, I think the better chance we have of that actually happening. A lot of people can say they want us to be a family, but how do you actually go about executing it. We\u2019re gonna try and see how it works.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PEORIA, Ariz. \u2014 Randy V\u00e1squez arrived in spring training last year flabby and throwing 88 mph. A big…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,1334,74,76,75,2611,127],"class_list":["post-189377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-latest-headlines","tag-mlb","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189377","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=189377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}