Padres Daily: Making good from bad; Michael King’s big misses; more lefties coming

Good morning,

That Padres made good out of a bad team playing badly.

As has been harped on continually here, teams generally climb their way to the postseason by stepping on the backs of losing teams.

I often point out that the 2016 Rangers are the only team in the past 56 seasons to have made the playoffs with a losing record against sub-.500 teams.

For further context: Last season, playoff teams had a .518 winning percentage against winning teams and a .622 winning percentage against losing teams. That was with the Brewers, Dodgers and Orioles being a combined 70 games over .500 against winning teams. Five playoff teams in 2023 had a losing record against winning teams. (The numbers were roughly the same in 2022, the first year the postseason was expanded to six teams in each league.)

With victories in the final two games of their series against the Reds last week and yesterday’s win, the Padres are now 11-12 against losing teams and 18-16 against winning teams.

As Donovan Solano said after last night’s 2-1 victory over the Marlins, “A win is a win.”

Yes, and more are supposed to come against teams like the Marlins, who have the worst record in the National League.

My game story (here) focused on the Padres taking advantage of two errors by Marlins shortstop Tim Anderson in the seventh inning, which led to the bases being loaded and Jake Cronenworth drawing an RBI walk.

It is true the Padres offense did enough to blow the game — getting eight hits but going 0-for-10 with runners in scoring position.

They are batting .194 and have six extra-base hits in the four games on this homestand.

But they have split those four games because in the past two their pitching staff gave them a chance to win, and the offense found a way to do so.

Sure, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado should have been out in the seventh inning yesterday. But they didn’t strike out.

“When somebody makes an error and … then we put the ball in play, that’s amazing,” Luis Arraez said. “That’s why we won the game tonight.”

The Padres struck out just four times yesterday, the seventh game this season in which they have done so no more than four times. (They had done so just once at this point last season).

They have mounted two consecutive winning rallies with help from errors.

A four-run sixth inning in Sunday’s 5-2 victory over the Yankees began with Cronenworth reaching base on an error. The first run in that inning, which tied the game 1-1, was driven in by Jackson Merrill’s fielder’s choice grounder with the bases loaded.

“Those are opportunities that you need to take advantage of,” Cronenworth said. “The last few days, we’ve done a great job of it.”

It goes without saying they have to hit better. But last year’s Padres — to whom we are all so fond of comparing this year’s Padres — didn’t win much when they didn’t hit much.

They were also 3-11 in games decided by one run at this point last season. Yesterday, the Padres improved to 6-6 in one-run games.

That is more than enough to account for them being a game above .500 this season versus the five games under they were through 57 games last year.

Some other things I keep track of that came into play yesterday and would seem to indicate differences in the way this Padres team completes:

• Yesterday was the 10th time in 18 games they have lost a lead and then won. They were 10-13 in such games at this point last season.
  
• Yesterday was the 16th time they have scored the deciding run in the sixth inning or later this season. They had done so in 11 victories through 57 games in 2023.
  
• Yesterday was the 13th game in which all nine spots in the lineup reached base safely at least once. It had happened five times to this point last year.
  

What a relief

The Marlins watched Padres relievers throw 9⅓ innings in the three-game series against the Yankees and, despite the bullpen allowing just two runs, felt like it might be a vulnerability.

They knew the Padres had leaned heavily on their relievers during their run of 10 games in the previous nine days.

“We thought maybe we could try to get to their bullpen,” Marlins manager Skip Schumaker said after yesterday’s game. “Because they were pretty taxed, it felt like, watching that (Yankees) series.”

That may be. But Adrián Morejón (two innings), Yuki Matsui (one) and Robert Suarez retired 12 of the 14 batters they faced. Morejón got his first win of the season, Matsui earned his sixth hold (tied with Wandy Peralta for the team lead) and Suarez secured his 16th save (third most in MLB).

In the past 10 games, Padres relievers have thrown 30⅔ innings while allowing five runs (1.47 ERA), stranding all nine runners they have inherited and posting a 0.78 WHIP.

Big misses

Michael King threw 14 “waste” pitches yesterday — balls so far out of the zone that they never look like strikes and, thus, have very little chance of inducing a swing.

The only other time this season he threw that many “waste” pitches was April 17, the day he took a no-hitter two outs deep into the seventh inning in Milwaukee.

The difference yesterday was that a high number of those pitches came earlier in counts after he was behind, which meant he was not going to get the Marlins to chase as much as he hoped and essentially doomed himself to a shorter outing.

“Oddly enough, I felt like I executed the game plan,” said King, who allowed one run in five innings. “They’re a team that chases a ton, so I was OK getting behind in the count 2-0 to a lot of these guys. I just felt like it wasn’t competitive pitches that got to 2-0, where I wish I was a little bit finer, and I felt like it would have been a lot more efficient.”

King was at 89 pitches after five innings, and Padres manager Mike Shildt opted to go with Morejón to start the sixth.

“He had a fair amount of deep counts, and they put some good at-bats there,” Shildt said. “... I thought he threw the ball well — seven punchouts, one walk. Thought everything was good coming out. You just got to a certain point where after five, it was 89 (pitches).”

Shildt mulled allowing King to face one or two batters, which likely would have gotten him around 100 pitches. But they wanted to have Marlins No.3 hitter Josh Bell, a switch-hitter who is far better against righties and was due up second, face the leeft-handed Morejon. And they are also looking to subtly curb King’s workload here and there in his first full season as a starter.

“We’re going to pitch him when we need to pitch him,” Shildt said of King, whose 66 innings are his second most in any of his five big-league seasons and 38⅔ innings shy of his 2024 total. “But the tiebreaker went to Adrian today.”

Wrong place

King allowed his 13th home run of the season, tied for most in the major leagues.

He said the same thing of the change-up he left in the middle of the plate for Jazz Chisholm Jr. in the third inning that he has after many of the homers: “Poorly executed.”

It was one of the four in red in the center of the strike zone:

(Baseball Savant)

A little power

The Padres have hit just three home runs in their past nine games.

The middle one of those was hit Saturday by team home run leader Tatis, who has nine this season and averages a home run every 16 at-bats over the course of his career. But the other two have come from unexpected sources.

Luis Arraez, who was averaging a home run every 91 at-bats in his career to that point, hit his first of the season on Tuesday. And yesterday, Donovan Solano, who went into the game averaging a home run every 77.4 at-bats, gave the Padres a 1-0 lead with a homer in the second inning.

“I don’t know,” Solano said after his first homer of the season. “I don’t try to look for homers. I try to stay in my approach, the hitter I am. It happens. It’s baseball, and sometimes we find good contact, exit velo, everything goes perfect and I get a homer. So it’s one of those days we celebrate. I feel happy for that homer and that we won the game.”

Lefty, lefty, lefty

Shildt noted before yesterday’s game that the Padres are hitting a lot of fly balls against left-handed pitchers.

Indeed, their fly ball rate entering yesterday’s game was at 32 percent against lefties (versus 25 percent against righties). Moreover, their line drive percentage against lefties was at 21 percent (versus 30 percent against right-handers).

“It’s more pitch selection than execution,” hitting coach Victor Rodriguez explained.

He therized that the Padres’ choice on location and types of pitches they were swinging at was probably at least partly due to the quality of left-handers they have faced.

Especially starters.

Just since April 29, they have faced six of the majors’ top eight left-handed starters (based on ERA).

Last night’s Marlins starter, Trevor Rogers, is a lefty as well. But he is not ranked among the MLB leaders in anything unless you turn those rankings upside down. In that case, he has the third-highest batting average allowed (.309) and the third-highest ERA (5.65) among qualifying left-handed starters.

Both numbers went down last night, as he allowed six hits and a run in 5⅓ innings.

So there was good and bad to take away for the Padres, who entered last night batting .219 against left-handed pitchers, 26th among MLB’s 30 teams.

They won a game started by a left-hander for just the third time in 11 games since April 29. Their .286 average (6-for-21) against Rogers was their second-highest against any lefty starter in that span.

But Rogers came in with a 6.11 ERA. And it wasn’t like he had stumbled to that mark. That ERA was not inflated by a poor outing or two.

He had allowed at least one run in all but one of his 10 starts, at least two runs in all but two and at least three runs in seven of the 10.

Yesterday was the fourth time he has made it into the sixth inning. He has never made it through the sixth.

And Yesterday was just a warm-up for the Padres.

The Marlins, who have four left-handed starters in their rotation, will start two more lefties in this three-game series.

Neither has been stellar — until recently.

Jesus Luzardo (2-3, 4.14) starts tonight. Braxton Garrett (1-0, 5.30) starts tomorrow.

Luzardo is coming off shutting out the Brewers over eight innings in his last start, and he held the Mets scoreless for six innings the start before that.

Garrett spent the first 6½ weeks of the season on the injured list with a shoulder impingement and then allowed 11 runs in 9⅔ innings in his first two starts. On Friday, he threw a complete game shutout against the Diamondbacks.

Tidbits

• The late-afternoon start time time on Memorial Day (3:44 p.m. after a four-minute delay because Padres catcher Luis Campusano’s PitchCom device was not working) made it so the Marlins were facing Suarez in that in-between time when shadows have engulfed the ballpark and the lights aren’t quite making their full impact in the waning early evening light. Suarez got a strikeout, a pop-up and a weak grounder in the ninth inning for his second save in two days. Of his 14 pitches, none was slower than 96.8 mph. Said Schumaker: “It’s tough to hit in the shadows against 100. It’s tough to hit in really good light against Suarez.”
  
• You can read about how how far back Shildt and Schumaker go in Jeff Sanders’ notebook (here). Also in that notebook is an item on Morejón, whose 8⅓-inning scoreless streak is the second-longest of his career. Morejon has not allowed a hit in his past five appearances (8⅔ innings).
  
• Ha-Seong Kim, who began the season batting fifth and has hit almost exclusively in the eighth and ninth spots the past month, was 1-for-4 last night and is batting .286 (8-for-28) with a .412 on-base percentage over the past nine games. He has raised his season average 12 points (to .217) and his OBP 15 points (to .232).
  
• Cronenworth’s fourth-inning double was his 500th career hit.
  
• Jurickson Profar’s single in the second inning was his first hit in 17 at-bats. It was the first time he had gone three games without a hit all season.
  
• Campusano walked for the 12th time in 174 plate appearances this season. He had 12 walks in 266 plate appearances coming into this season.
  
• Machado extended his hit streak to six games, during which he is batting .318 (7-for-22).

All right, that’s it for me.

Talk to you tomorrow.