Good morning,
Yesterday was a lesson in “It’s baseball.”
That is the phrase players, managers and others around the game use to explain the sometimes inexplicable vagaries of the game.
Yesterday, a day after the Padres came back from a six-run deficit to beat the Marlins, the Marlins came back from a five-run deficit to beat the Padres.
It was almost as much a team loss as Tuesday had been a team win.
The lowlights:
Kyle Hart could not hold the big lead he was given, and he had help squandering it from David Morgan. Fernando Tatis Jr. ran through a stop sign at third base that took away a chance for the Padres to make their five-run lead even more. Jason Adam bounced a pitch that allowed the Marlins to take their first lead. Manny Machado bobbled a sure out that led to two unearned runs, which gave the Marlins their final lead.
You can read about how the 10-8 loss went down in Jeff Sanders’ game story (here).
The Marlins are young and, presumably because of it, make too many physical and mental errors. But they play hard and appear to have some promising position players and pitchers. They hit in bunches all series and had 13 of them yesterday.
That was not the bad part. The Marlins entered yesterday’s game ranked 11th in batting average, a spot behind the Padres, and 16th in OPS, two spots behind the Padres.
Hart took the blame for the loss. So did Adam. There was some validity to both claims. The first seven runs the Marlins scored were simply on the merits of their hitting and mistakes by the Padres pitchers.
What was shocking was the Padres looking too much like the Marlins at times yesterday.
The Padres have done such a good job of not stooping to their opponent’s level when the opponent was of a clearly lesser quality. They owe their 31-23 record to that fact, as they are 11-15 against teams with winning records and 20-8 against teams with losing records.
That is not a great ratio. But it is not all that far from common for a contending team to build its record that way.
The Dodgers are 10-9 against winning teams. The Phillies are 13-12. The Mariners are 8-11. Those are three division leaders.
It could be argued the Padres stole one and squandered one the past two days, so it evened out. But that is not how it is supposed to work when playing a team with the third-worst record in the National League. Those teams are the ones who are supposed to give games away.
But, hey, it happens.
It’s baseball.
So much
There is nothing so unpredictable as a bullpen, a group of individuals seen as a single entity tasked with trying to be perfect every game.
At least one – and usually more — of a team’s relief pitchers appears in virtually every game.
And often, just when it seems things are going so well, they suddenly are not.
Like yesterday.
A day after three Padres relievers worked 3⅔ scoreless innings — the bullpen’s fourth scoreless effort in a five-game stretch — all four Padres relievers who appeared in yesterday’s game allowed at least one run.
Adam, who usually protects leads in the eighth inning and entered the game with a 1.35 ERA, bounced a slider on the first pitch he threw to allow the runner on third base to race in and give the Marlins a 7-6 lead.
He escaped that inning without further damage despite allowing three singles. Then, after the Padres scored two runs in the bottom of the seventh to retake the lead, Adam hit the first batter he faced in the eighth inning in the helmet and then was victimized by the Machado error that led to two unearned runs.
Adam was replaced after the error by Machado, and Wandy Peralta got two outs before walking a batter and allowing two singles that brought in the two inherited runners and one more.
Adam, who was charged with two unearned runs, took the loss and shouldered the blame.
“There’s honestly days over the course of the season where baseball feels really easy, and then there’s days where it feels really hard,” Adam said. “Today was one of those days it just felt like I couldn’t quite get my rhythm right, couldn’t execute pitches like I’d like to. And so balls found gaps, and I just didn’t get the job done, didn’t execute.”
The workload of almost all of the relievers has played into how manager Mike Shildt has had to try to navigate a number of games this month, especially during a stretch of nine straight games that ended yesterday.
Thus, the rookie Morgan replaced Hart with two on in the fifth, Adam was in for the seventh and the lefty Peralta stayed in to face the two right-handed batters atop the Marlins order in the eighth (the two hitters who drove in the go-ahead and insurance runs).
That last decision by Shildt screams just how much Robert Suarez needed a rest. Shildt doesn’t play around with leads like that. He has never been reluctant to bring in his closer for a four-out save. But Suarez had pitched four of the previous six days
“I think it was a little bit of attrition, right?” Shildt said. “You’re talking about nine games — in the (past) seven, a bullpen game, (two) extra innings. These guys man, so much respect for the bullpen. Those guys are — they’re getting after it. They’re getting as extended as we’re comfortable with.”
Adam was sure to say his struggles yesterday were “not work workload related.”
The Padres bullpen has seen its ERA balloon from an MLB-best 1.68 on May 5 to 3.39 (10th). After protecting all of the 22 leads they were handed in the season’s first 34 games, they have let six of the 10 leads they have inherited since May 5 slip away.
Still, they had been dependable of late, even as they had to work eight innings Saturday when starting pitcher Michael King was scratched from his start. That was the only game in the five leading up to yesterday in which they yielded any runs.
“I’m really proud of this bullpen,” Adam said. “I think it’s a fantastic group of guys. And really, honestly, outside of me, I feel like everyone did their job today. They were ahead of hitters. They’re putting guys away, and I just let too many people on base. It’s a great group. I’m proud of these guys there. They’re doing their job day in and day out, and we’re prepared to go to battle for the rest of the season.”
Tidbits
- Gavin Sheets hit his 11th home run of 2025, giving him one more than he hit in each of the past two seasons. He has 185 plate appearances this year. He had 344 plate appearances in ’23 and 501 in ’24.
- Tyler Wade made his first start in right field yesterday after making his first start in left field on Tuesday. He was 0-for-3 with a walk and scored a run. Wade has now started at all three outfield positions and second base. He has also played third base in two games and pitched in one.
- Xander Bogaerts was 2-for-4 yesterday and was 6-for-12 with two walks in the three games against the Marlins. That raised his batting average 18 points (to .249) and his on-base percentage 17 points (to .335).
- Bogaerts stole his 11th base in 11 tries this season. He is one of five players with at least 11 attempts to remain perfect this season.
- Jake Cronenworth was 1-for-3 with a two-run double yesterday and has reached base in seven consecutive games. He is batting .286 (6-for-21) with a .407 OBP during that stretch.
- Yesterday was the Padres’ first loss since April 25, 2024, in a game in which they scored eight or more runs. They were 7-0 in such games this season. They are 33-2 over the past two seasons when scoring at least eight runs.
- The Padres were 4-for-5 with runners in scoring position yesterday. They had been 12-0 this season in games in which they got at least four hits with runners in scoring position.
All right, that’s it for me.
I need to move on and get to work on my analysis of the first third of the season, which the Padres completed yesterday. That story will be on our Padres page later today.
No game today, so no newsletter tomorrow. The next Padres Daily will be in your inbox Saturday.
