MILWAUKEE \u2014 The Padres made the somewhat surprising decision to go with left-hander Robbie Ray for Game 1 of the National League Division Series.<\/p>\n
He will take the mound for his third career postseason start Saturday evening after the Brewers\u2019 Jacob Misiorowski pitches the top of the first inning.<\/p>\n
Two of the Brewers\u2019 best hitters \u2014 Jake Bauers and Brice Turang \u2014 bat from the left side. But Ray has actually been slightly more effective against right-handed hitters this season, and Bauers has been slightly better against lefties. Turang has been far better against right-handed pitching.<\/p>\n
Presumably, Padres manager Craig Stammen will be coming out to get the ball from Ray at the first sign of trouble, because that is how playoff games are managed and both teams have an excellent stable of relievers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the postseason, every manager is going to be a little more aggressive with their bullpen,\u201d Stammen said. \u201cIt\u2019s nice to be aggressive when you know you have a good bullpen. I\u2019m sure (Brewers manager Pat Murphy) feels the same way that I do about ours.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saturday was Walker Buehler\u2019s turn in the rotation, and his quality start (six innings, one run) against the Brewers in August seemed to make him a strong candidate to start Game 1.<\/p>\n
Stammen confirmed Michael King will start Sunday\u2019s Game 2, and it is highly likely that Nick Pivetta will pitch Game 3 on Tuesday in San Diego.<\/p>\n
\u201cWalker will play a big role in this series at some point,\u201d Stammen said. \u201cI don\u2019t know when that is. But he\u2019s got such a playoff pedigree that it will be hard for us to leave him out and not give him a chance to put his mark on the series.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ray, who turned 35 on Thursday, finished 2026 with a 3.59 ERA, which ranked 14th in the National League. But he had a 5.09 ERA in nine starts with the Padres. His walk rate, batting average allowed and slugging percentage allowed were all significantly higher after the Padres acquired him at the trade deadline.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs far as how far he goes or how long, he\u2019ll determine a lot of that (by) how well he pitches,\u201d Stammen said. \u201cWe know with Robbie, he can be erratic at times. If he\u2019s throwing strikes, I feel good about Robbie being in there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even when at his best, Ray allows a fair amount of traffic. But he limits damage, and playoff baseball is not a beauty contest. For the starting pitcher, working a postseason is more than ever about allowing fewer runs than the other starter.<\/p>\n
Ray\u2019s final regular season start provided a glimpse of what the Padres are looking for Saturday, as he allowed the Dodgers one run in 3\u2153 innings while walking just one batter. He left with the Padres ahead, and they went on to win.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Ray faced) an offense that\u2019s very patient, much like the Brewers, and he\u2019s able to throw strikes and get us into the game in a good spot where we could go to our bullpen,\u201d Stammen said. \u201cThe things the Dodgers did against them, they fought a bunch of pitches off and raised his pitch count up. It\u2019ll be a similar type of game. He\u2019s going to have to throw strikes. I trust that he will. He\u2019s a veteran of Major League Baseball, and he\u2019s a professional out-getter. And I feel good about Robbie being in this position.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking of that start, Ray said: \u201cI feel like my stuff was really good that day. \u2026 They made me work for it. I expect no less from this ballclub. The biggest thing is setting the tone, coming out early and setting the tone throwing strikes, getting ahead of guys. I think for me, it will be a very similar attack. You\u2019ve got to \u2026 trust your defense. Make them put the ball in play and see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILWAUKEE \u2014 The Padres made the somewhat surprising decision to go with left-hander Robbie Ray for Game 1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,1334,74,76,75,2611,127],"class_list":["post-483321","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\/483321","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=483321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}