Good morning,
There was so much that was right about that game for the Padres.
And then it went wrong, and they lost 9-5 to the Angels.
You can read (here) in my game story about how Robert Suarez blew the game Jackson Merrill tried to win with three hits, an RBI, two runs and two diving catches in the outfield.
Suarez began the ninth inning with a strikeout, allowed a single and then walked four straight batters.
That was his night.
He left the bases loaded in a tie game to Alek Jacob, who got a strikeout before serving up a sweeper, dead-center in the strike zone, that Taylor Ward hit to the seats beyond left field.
Suarez blew the save, took the loss and shouldered the blame.
“It’s really as simple as I just threw too many balls today after the first hitter,” he said. “Just too many balls and just couldn’t work out.”
Yes.
He was missing with all three of his pitches. On one run of six straight balls between his second and third walks, he missed with all three in succession: changeup, four-seam fastball, sinker, four-seam, changeup, four-seam.
But also, no. It was not quite as simple as that.
The inning also got away from Suarez because of a ball that clanged off a glove and two balls that went in and out of gloves.
Luis Rengifo, the first runner to reach against Suarez, did so on a single grounded up the middle that bounced off the glove of a diving Jake Cronenworth.
Suarez was behind 2-1 to the next batter, Logan O’Hoppe, when O’Hoppe lofted a ball down the right field line near the side wall that went in and then popped out of Fernando Tatis Jr.’s glove.
It would be wrong to say Tatis blew the play. He ran 95 feet and was two steps from the wall when he got to the ball. Nonetheless, it would have been the second out had he completed the catch.
After Suarez had issued two more walks to load the bases and bring in a run, he blazed a full-count fastball to the top of the zone at 99 mph that Yoán Moncada tipped. The ball went in and out of catcher Elias Díaz’s glove. As it fell to the ground, Díaz reached for it with his bare hand, and after it hit the dirt he looked up to the sky.
It is impossible to blame a catcher for not catching a ball that has been tipped. Still, this could have been the third out. Or the second, if you don’t assume the ball Tatis dropped was caught.
This is not to make an excuse for Suarez. On this night, there was no excuse to be made for a poor performance.
But it does illustrate a fine line that can sometimes be missed.
The Kid is the man
If you are a fan of good baseball, like the kind Merrill plays pretty much every night, then last night was a real treat.
But, you know, some people only care about winning or losing
People such as Merrill.
“Whatever happened in this game, whoever made good plays, good hits, screw it,” he said after the game. “… That’s the point (of) playing baseball — to help your team win as much as possible.”
Here is what Merrill did last night:
- He singled in the first inning.
- He drove in the Padres’ first run with a single and came around to score the go-ahead run in the third inning.
- With two outs and nobody on and the Padres ahead 3-2 in the fifth inning, he ran 57 feet into the gap in left-center field and dove to catch a would-be double.
- With runners on first and third and the Padres leading 4-3 in the seventh inning, he ran in 40 feet and dove to catch a sinking line drive by Nolan Schanuel just inches before it would have hit the ground and become a two-run double.
- Finally, Merrill led off the bottom of the eighth inning with a triple and scored on Xander Bogaerts’ sacrifice fly.
JACKSON MERRILL PRESERVES THE LEAD 🤯 pic.twitter.com/O3b8gP2Qq6
— MLB (@MLB) May 13, 2025
Sometimes we talk about a team’s win-loss record when a player is in the lineup or when a player gets a certain amount of hits or RBIs. That often helps tell a story or provides perspective.
It did so over the season’s first 10 games before Merrill was sidelined with a right hamstring strain.
Merrill hit .378 with three home runs and 10 RBIs, all tops on the team, in that start to the season. He stole a base and scored a game-tying run because of it. One of the runs he drove in tied a game. Two others were go-ahead RBIs. Two drove in what ended up being the deciding runs in games.
The Padres were 8-2, and there was no denying Merrill was a big reason.
Drawing a line between Merrill’s performance and the team’s results the past week, however, would be illustrative of nothing.
The Padres are 2-3 in the five games he has played in since returning from his monthlong stay on the injured list.
He is batting .609 (14-for-23) with two doubles, a triple, a home run, seven runs scored and seven RBIs. He has three go-ahead RBIs and one game-deciding RBI, and he was in line to have another before the bullpen blew a late lead at Yankee Stadium last week.
“He’s incredible,” Michael King said. “… He’s the heart and soul of this team.”
Merrill’s interaction with the media after the game was indicative of who he is and what he stands for.
There is nothing wrong with speaking about accomplishments in a difficult sport that does involve individual achievements, even in a losing effort. Plenty of players do. And frankly, when a player declines to discuss positives things he contributed following a loss, it can seem disingenuous or merely a reason to not talk.
But this was so in line with who Merrill presents himself to be. He did not refuse to talk. He spoke about why he wasn’t talking about himself.
“You guys know my main goal,” he said. “We didn’t accomplish it tonight.”
Then he praised Suarez profusely.
“Robbie’s the man, dude,” Merrill said. “… It’s just baseball. You know, that stuff happens. You see the greatest closer of all time blow the game sometimes. But Robbie’s our guy. He’s our closer. He’s our man. He’s our rock. We’re gonna fall on him 10 times out of 10. We’re gonna trust him tomorrow when he goes in the game. (If) we need him again, he’s gonna be go in there and he’s going to shove.”
Rough patch?
The Padres bullpen had preserved all 22 leads it inherited after the sixth inning through the team’s first 34 games.
Over the past five games in which a reliever has been asked to pitch, the bullpen has blown a lead in the seventh, eighth and ninth innings.
Padres relievers have allowed 29 runs (28 earned) over 15⅓ innings in those five games, In that time, their collective ERA has ballooned from an MLB-leading 1.68 to 3.25, which ranks seventh.
It can no longer be said these blow-ups have been isolated incidents. It is not just Wandy Peralta. Every reliever except Yuki Matsui has been complicit, though Jeremiah Estrada’s unearned run came after the automatic runner was placed on second in the 10th inning on Wednesday.
This still should be viewed as one of those ruts bullpens inevitably endure in a season. However, this is the worst such rut in almost half a century.
The last time a Padres bullpen was brutalized like this over a five-game stretch was in 1977. And that technically was not quite as bad, as Padres relievers combined to allow 28 runs over 19⅓ innings from May 13 to 17 of that year.
King just OK
Even aside from the fact the Angels arrived in San Diego with a 16-23 record, last night’s game lined up well for the Padres.
They were 14-4 at home, and their starting pitcher had been all but invincible there.
King was 3-1 with a 1.32 ERA in five starts at Petco Park. Visiting teams were batting .158 against him there.
And King represented a particular challenge for the Angels.
They have just three batters on their roster who can hit from the left side, and two were in the starting lineup. Their .220 team batting average against right-handed pitchers ranked third worst in the majors.
The .186 average King was allowing opposing batters ranked second in the National League. The .162 average he was allowing right-handed batters also ranked second.
King had retired four straight batters — and eight of the first nine — when two right-handers made him pay for pitches not properly executed.
Tim Anderson lined an 0-2 sweeper the other way to the gap in right field for a double and Zach Neto sent a 3-1 fastball over the wall in left field to give the Angels a 2-0 lead in the third inning.
King, who was in line for the win when he departed, yielded four hits, three to right-handed batters, while allowing three runs (two earned) in 5⅔ innings.
“Obviously the one to Neto,” King said. “Hung a slider to Anderson for the double before that. Those are tough.”
Tidbits
- The Padres confirmed Yu Darvish will make a rehab start tomorrow for Triple-A El Paso in Las Vegas. Provided the start goes well, meaning Darvish gets to 60 or so pitches and he feels good physically, indications are that he will make just the one rehab start. That is not certain, and the Padres are deferring to Darvish on the pace of his comeback after the 38-year-old right-hander was shut down in mid-March with elbow inflammation.
- Manny Machado went 2-for-3 and walked last night. That raised his National League-leading batting average to .331 and extended his hitting streak to 12 games. He is batting .467 during the streak, which is the longest active hitting streak in the major leagues and tied for the fourth longest of Machado’s career. (His longest was 16 games, set in 2016, and the last time he had hit in 12 straight was 2020.)
- The Padres released Yuli Gurriel last month, and this month’s Luis Campusano experiment lasted three games. So left-handed hitter Gavin Sheets has served as the designated hitter the past two games in which the Padres have faced a left-handed starter. He was 1-for-3 against Yusei Kukuchi last night and is now 4-for-20 with a double against lefties. Sheets is batting .323 (31-for-96) with six doubles and five home runs against right-handers.
- Cronenworth batted .203 with a .276 on-base percentage against left-handers last season, by far the lowest numbers of his career against lefties. He is batting .211 (4-for-19) this year but with a .318 OBP. He was 0-for-2 with a walk against Kikuchi last night.
- The Padres have shut down catcher Ethan Salas, their second-ranked prospect, with a stress reaction in his back. You can read about that (here) in Jeff Sanders’ story from last night.
- It turns out that right-hander Jhony Brito had surgery last month that will keep him out at least into next season. Brito, who had been shut down last summer with a flexor tendon issue and then quickly shut down with the same issue this spring, underwent a dual procedure in which the flexor tendon was repaired and there was a brace affixed to his UCL as a sort of revision of his 2017 Tommy John surgery.
All right, that’s it for me.
Talk to you tomorrow.
