With the team wading into a third straight losing month and so many usual suspects mired in out-of-characteristic seasons, it became apparent early this summer that only one Padre would represent the team in this year\u2019s Midsummer Classic. It remains to be seen if right-hander Mason Miller \u2014 announced as an All-Star for the second time in his career on Sunday \u2014 will pitch with a lead before making the trip to Philadelphia after next week\u2019s homestand.<\/p>\n
The Padres\u2019 best player and the NL\u2019s most dominant has not pitched since the first game of this road trip and has not recorded a save since June 22.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the ebbs and flows of a back-end guy,\u201d Miller said after learning of the second All-Star selection of his career. \u201cJust there\u2019s times during a season, good teams, bad teams, the best closer, best relief pitchers aren\u2019t throwing as much, but it\u2019s just a challenge to us of staying ready and knowing that at one point this year we\u2019re not going to lose the next 70, however many games there are.<\/p>\n
\u201cA season is not an even, continuous line; it\u2019s very up and down.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Padres have certainly been up and down, sitting as many as 11 games over .500 after May 23. But they rode a seven-game losing streak into Saturday after going 11-15 in June and 13-15 in May.<\/p>\n
Miller, however, has been nothing but up since arriving at last year\u2019s trade deadline. The franchise-record 34 \u2154-scoreless inning streak began late last summer and lasted until late April when he finally coughed up a run. By then he\u2019d already been chosen as Team USA\u2019s closer and he\u2019s likely the top choice to save the game for the NL should they have a lead later this month in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
Miller\u2019s 21 saves are tied with the Cardinals\u2019 Riley O\u2019Brien and the Phillies\u2019 Jhoan Dur\u00e1n for the most in the NL, five behind the Guardians\u2019 Cade Smith, but no one with 19 saves is perfect as Miller is to start his first full year as the Padres\u2019 closer.<\/p>\n
More than that, Miller\u2019s 0.78 ERA is to former Padres closer Robert Suarez (0.56) among all relievers with at least 30 innings, his 50% strikeout rate is more than 14 points better than the next-best reliever and his .131 opponent average is the third lowest in the majors.<\/p>\n
So, of course, Miller is an All-Star; every team gets at least one.<\/p>\n
And of course Miller is the team\u2019s lone All-Star.<\/p>\n
After all, Manny Machado is beginning Saturday with a .190 batting average, Fernando Tatis Jr. has just five homers, Xander Bogaerts as a Padre has not approached his production as a four-time All-Star in Boston and Joe Musgrove has not pitched since 2024.<\/p>\n
The Padres last year became the first team to ever send three relievers to an All-Star Game, but Suarez signed with the Braves after the season, Jason Adam is on the injured list for the second time and Adri\u00e1n Morej\u00f3n got off to a slow start.<\/p>\n
The Padres have not had a single reliever represent them in the All-Star game since Brad Hand (2017-2018) and Kirby Yates were the singular representatives in three consecutive years. The pandemic canceled the 2020 game, but multiple Padres represented the team over the next five years, with as many as five Padres making the trip in 2021, 2024 and 2025.<\/p>\n
The Padres also had position players \u2014 Machado in 2022 and 2025, Tatis in 2021 and 2024 and Jurickson Profar in 2024 \u2014 start in the game in four of the last five years.<\/p>\n
The selection is Miller\u2019s second, as he represented the Athletics en route to saving 28 games in his first year as a reliever.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s exciting, obviously,\u201d Miller said. \u201cAn awesome individual achievement. Told the guys I\u2019m really honored to be able to represent this group too, competing within your individual position, but being able to be a representative of your team is something that I think a lot of players should cherish.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the team wading into a third straight losing month and so many usual suspects mired in out-of-characteristic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,1334,74,76,75,2611,127],"class_list":["post-386491","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\/386491","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=386491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}