Good morning from Atlanta,
The Padres finally found a solution. They were winners again.
Their 2-1 victory over the Braves, the Padres’ first win in seven games, was about so much more than the ninth-inning homer by Manny Machado that served as the deciding run.
It was about what Nick Pivetta did for six innings and what Adrián Morejón did for 1⅔ innings. It was about the defense by Jose Iglesias and Elias Díaz. It was about Gavin Sheets making an adjustment and hitting a home run off one of the game’s best left-handers. It was about trying all night to find a way to force the action against Chris Sale and then, when finally rid of him, it was about Machado getting his biggest hit of the season.
It was one win.
But it was much needed, and there was much to be pleased about.
Cue the first 84 seconds of an imioned 3½-minute soliloquy by Mike Shildt:
“Oh my gosh, man, it just speaks volumes,” Shildt said at the start of a postgame address to the media in his office. “We talk about winners find a solution, and (people) are going to say, ‘Hey you just lost six straight. How do you say that?’ I say it with complete confidence. Because, listen, the game is not meant to be played perfectly. It’s just not going to be. And it’s one of the hardest games there is to play, and it can be unforgiving, and it’s a testament to your mental toughness and your ability to play it right. And the thing about your mental toughness is you can play it right and still not get results.
“And so we’re not going to alibi (that) we played it exactly the right last six games. But I can tell you we played it tough, and that couldn’t have been more on display tonight. You got one way to go when things aren’t going well. Actually, you’ve got two ways to go. We only have one. One way, you can feel sorry for yourself and you can pout. But the game doesn’t care and, ultimately, the other side is not going to ever care. And so we chose the only solution that we know, and that’s to just keep figuring it out and keep going.”
You can read in my game story (here) about how last night went down, including a bizarre baserunning mistake in the ninth by a pinch-runner for the Braves.
What a weird way to end a losing streak but we’ll take it pic.twitter.com/r7ioS5eYyl
— Talking Friars (@TalkingFriars) May 24, 2025
There is more to dive into, so let’s do it.
Grinder
Pivetta did not overwhelm the Braves last night the way he did on March 30, when he allowed them one hit over seven scoreless innings.
He was not nearly as sharp as in any of his previous five quality starts. He fell behind consistently. He walked three batters. He allowed two-out baserunners that made for stressful innings.
But in reaching back and making pitches when he absolutely had to again and again, he threw the kind of game last night that leaves other starting pitchers perhaps even more impressed than if he had cruised through seven innings.
“Just grit,” Joe Musgrove said. “All night.”
Ronald Acuña Jr. hit the first pitch Pivetta threw 467 feet at 115.5 mph, the longest home run by nearly 40 feet and hardest by almost 4 mph off a Padres pitcher this season.
The home run, the fifth-longest of Acuña’s career and fourth-longest in MLB this year, also happened to come on the first pitch Acuña saw in his first game back after more than a year recovering from a torn ACL.
“Just challenge him, see where he’s at,” Pivetta said of his intent with the 93 mph fastball. “I didn’t execute my pitch. It wasn’t the right location. Left it just middle-middle. I was trying to just go up and in to him. … But, you know, that’s what good players do. They hit fastballs and hit them over the fence.”
After following Acuña’s homer with two outs, Pivetta walked Marcel Ozuna and surrendered a single to Alex Verdugo before a fly ball ended the inning.
Acuña led off the third with a single and Austin Riley followed with a walk. Pivetta then fell behind 2-0 to the next three batters before retiring them all — striking out Matt Olson and Ozuna and getting Verdugo on a fly ball to left field.
The Braves also got a runner in scoring position with two outs in the fourth and fifth, but Pivetta got the final out in those innings and retired the Braves in order in the sixth, finishing with a season-high 102 pitches.
“He competed,” catcher Elias Díaz said. “His curveball was amazing.”
Pivetta’s out pitch ended six outs for him and got 16 other strikes.
Pivetta is quoted in my game story acknowledging this as an important series given how the Padres have fared recently. He also had an eye on the five games the Padres still have to play before their next day off and the four games they have already played in this run of nine straight.
“It’s just knowing the situation of where we’re at … with the bullpen,” he said. “They’ve thrown a lot of important innings the previous series, long travel the day before. So I was rested up and ready to go and just trying to do my best.”
Shildt could not have been more fired up about what his starting pitcher did.
“Nick set the tone,” Shildt said. “Talk about an absolute battle. I mean, where we’re at, first pitch of the game, we’re down 1-0. And that could have been an escape. ‘Here we go, oh no.’ … He said, ‘No, it ain’t happening.’ He battled his tail off. He had some traffic in the third and came in, and he was defiant and very convicted that he was going to get six innings. (He said), ‘I’m getting six innings’. And it’s amazing what your mind can tell your body to do. And clearly his body performed very well for him. It started right there on that dirt mound, and Nick Pivetta set the tone for us.”
Powered up
Machado’s home run was a long time coming.
“I know it was a while, but how long?” he asked after the game.
It had been 62 at-bats across 16 full games and parts of two others since he had last homered.
And he had just three all season before last night.
“Creeping up,” he said.
Manny Machado – San Diego Padres (4)
pic.twitter.com/JmhrnB8BWv— MLB HR Videos (@MLBHRVideos) May 24, 2025
Last night’s homer moved Machado out of a tie with Díaz, Luis Arraez, Xander Bogaerts and Jake Cronenworth for fourth on the team. He is now tied with Jackson Merrill, who has 86 fewer at-bats, for third.
Where has the power gone?
“I don’t know,” he said. “I found it tonight. That’s all that matters.”
Well, kind of. It’s important that Machado be Machado.
It is nice he leads the team with a .309 batting average and .376 on-base percentage. But that is not why he is making the big bucks. That is not why he bats third every game. That is not how the Padres will get where they want to go.
But he can afford to be calm and make jokes.
There are few players more confident in their ability or more confident that the back of their baseball card will end up looking like it always does. And Machado is the only player in the major leagues with at least 28 home runs each of the past nine full seasons.
Still, he has hit this few home runs over the first 49 games of a season just once. That was in his injury-shortened 2014 season.
He did have just five home runs at this point last season before finishing with 29.
Reminded of that, Machado said, “So I’m on pace.”
Sheets adjusts
Sheets hit a 97 mph Sale fastball on the inner edge of the plate 406 feet to center field for a game-tying home run in last night’s second inning.
“That’s big-boy land,” Shildt said. “That’s a big-boy part of this ballpark. … He’s just got a nice stroke, and he’s a strong kid. So he’s just trying to make good on the baseball, and the power is already there. That’s an impressive swing.”
The launch off the barrel of his bat at 106.8 mph was thanks as much to Sheets’ brain as his brawn.
“I wanted to get off the plate a little bit,” Sheets said, explaining why he was standing farther from the plate than usual while facing Sale. “I saw some lefties that had success against him, and felt like, if I gave him the outside part of the plate, it’s a tough matchup, but … it made that pitch middle, and I got it out center.”
Gavin Sheets – San Diego Padres (9)
pic.twitter.com/6k3ypIC2Oq— MLB HR Videos (@MLBHRVideos) May 23, 2025
Said Sheets: “I gave him that away lane, because I don’t think I can cover that away lane, anyway, with him, just with his angle and everything.”
Sale clearly learned. He came up and in hard against Sheets a couple times in their next two meetings last night. But he ended two strikeouts with sliders away against which Sheets tried unsuccessfully to check his swing.
He had done his damage, though, and it continued an important trend.
Sheets, who stroked an RBI single off a lefty on Thursday, is 7-for-27 (.259) against left-handers this season after hitting .168 average against them over his first four big-league seasons with the White Sox.
“I think that it’s being somewhere where they trust you can do it,” Sheets said. “They speak confidence in it. And part of being an everyday player is you get guys like Sale, and you gotta find ways to battle. You embrace it, and you love it, and you go to battle that day and come in with a game plan. And you try to get them at least one time.”
I wrote in yesterday’s newsletter about Sheets being increasingly used against left-handers, and it certainly seems that will continue.
For one thing, the Padres no longer have a right-handed-hitting designated hitter after they released Yuli Gurriel last month.
For another, Sheets is going his job.
“When he is productive against lefties, it’s really big,” Shildt said. “Him driving the ball the other way against the lefty, him getting big hits this past series against lefties … Just means he’s an everyday guy.”
Bounceback
I really wanted to talk to Morejón last night, but I had a deadline for the newspaper and eventually had to leave the clubhouse to go write.
But we don’t need to hear from Morejón to know he came through big, relieving Pivetta at the start of the seventh inning and retiring all five batters he faced before giving way to Jason Adam to finish the eighth inning.
Morejón’s smooth performance, completed in 19 pitches, came two days after he pitched well while being charged with four unearned runs against the Blue Jays.
He was called on with the Padres down 2-0 in the seventh inning Wednesday at Rogers Centre. He threw 15 strikes among his 18 pitches, and this is how it went:
A hard single grounded through the right side. An error on a ground ball by Machado on what would have likely been a double play. A sacrifice bunt that loaded the bases because Machado made another error trying to field the ball. A run scored when Cronenworth bobbled an easy grounder that arguably could have resulted in a force out at home but instead became an out at second. An 80.8 mph RBI single on a pitch low and inside. Alek Jacob replaced him.
“He got a lot of soft ,” Shildt said. “The inning got away from us a little bit, uncharacteristically, defensively. And I went out and got him, and the competitor was like, ‘Man, I want to keep going.’ But we went and got him because we realized we don’t want to throw too many bullets here, because we’re going to need those bullets for later. And that later was tonight.”
Darvish update
Yu Darvish continues to play catch in San Diego, and there might be some clarity next week regarding his next step.
Multiple sources have insisted over the past week that Darvish is not feeling pain in his right elbow, which is why he was shut down in spring training. They say there has not been a setback but that the team cannot move forward with a plan until Darvish is comfortable.
The 38-year-old right-hander looked sharp and strong throwing 51 pitches in four innings in his May 14 rehab start, but he felt “tight” in his elbow afterward and does not feel ready to pitch in a major league game. Mostly, he is not confident he would recover well enough to make repeated starts, and he does not want to compromise the Padres’ rotation.
Darvish is expected to be examined in the coming days to affirm his elbow is structurally sound.
I have written a couple times — including in a story (here) a couple days ago — about the Padres having long planned to be careful with Darvish as he approaches 39.
Tidbits
- Eight of the 10 runs the Padres have scored over their past six games have come via a home run. Four of those home runs have been hit by Sheets.
- Arraez was 0-for-3 with a sacrifice bunt last night, bringing to an end a hitting streak that had reached nine games.
- Adam came in to face Ozuna in the eighth inning and got him to fly out on 1-0 slider. Thanks to what happened in the ninth inning, Adam was credited with his fifth win of the season. That is second most among all relievers.
- Maybe you noticed that Robert Suarez’s fastball velocity was back up from the beginning last night. On Thursday in Toronto, his first pitch in a game in eight days was a 94.5 mph four-seam fastball. It was his second-slowest fastball of the season. Moreover, just one of his first six fastballs was harder than 96.5 mph. He did top 98 mph four times by the end of his one inning. The dropoff was attributed to his layoff. Last night, he came out at 97 mph, quickly got to 98 and hit 100 twice.
- Cronenworth is 0-for-10 against Sale, so Jose Iglesias started in his place last night. Cronenworth did pinch-hit in the eighth inning. He drew his 17th walk of the season, which is fourth on the team despite his missing 24 games with a fractured rib. Cronenworth’s batting average has dropped to .240, but his on-base percentage is a robust .389 in his 95 plate appearances.
- Iglesias was 1-for-3 last night and has five hits in his past 13 at-bats. That follows a 0-for-19 stretch.
- Fernando Tatis Jr. doubled last night but also struck out twice. He is 1-for-12 with a walk and seven strikeouts over the past three games and is batting .203 (15-for-74) in May.
- Jeff Sanders did an interesting Q&A with reliever Sean Reynolds (here). They get pretty deep into Reynolds’ transformation from a position player to a pitcher while in the minor leagues.
- I had a chart in yesterday’s newsletter that showed Sheets having finished the 2021 season batting .150. That was a typo and a bad editing job by me. He hit .250 that season.
- Wil Myers was at Truist Park yesterday. There are only five players on the roster remaining from his final season with the Padres, in 2022. Cronenworth, Machado and Tatis, the three position players he played with, spent a lot of time visiting with Myers in the dugout.
A familiar face 💛 pic.twitter.com/j3hCtPhAi9
— San Diego Padres (@Padres) May 23, 2025
All right, that’s it for me.
No newsletter tomorrow. I occasionally will take a Saturday night game off from the late nights (early mornings) the newsletter requires. Tonight will be one of those occasions.
I will still have game coverage on our Padres page.
The next Padres Daily will be in your inbox Monday morning.
