Good morning from Milwaukee,
The Padres have come to believe in what Mike Shildt and A.J. Preller believe — that you can play postseason baseball for an entire regular season.
“I mean, you don’t, right?” Tyler Wade said of literally having the same level of intensity required in October for the six months leading into it. “Sometimes you don’t. But it’s just the mentality going into the game. Like, where you don’t have to flip the switch to get more in you. It’s just like, ‘All right, our switch is flipped.’ And then now you’re rolling.
“That’s just our game. We focus on the little things. …. We want to treat every game like it’s a playoff game. So when that crunch time comes, it’s just the same game and you don’t have to change the way you play.”
You can read in my game story (here) about how the Padres went about beating the Brewers 2-0 last night.
We can still point out that they were 1-for-6 with runners in scoring position and that they would be well-served to win a blowout now and then. (Only one of their past 11 victories has been by more than two runs.)
But they are winning, and they are winning the way they feel they must.
“When you play close games, that’s how you win games,” Shildt said last night. “It’s how you get to the playoffs. And that’s what playoff baseball is about. You just find a way.”
He later quoted his mentor, longtime Cardinals personnel guru George Kissell: “Have every tool in the tool box, and know when and how to use them.”
The Padres last night got excellent pitching — mostly when it mattered most, with runners on base and the Brewers’ best hitters at the plate — as five pitchers worked the team’s MLB-best 11th shutout.
A huge play on defense by Jake Cronenworth in the seventh inning prevented a run.
And they scored the only run they ended up needing in the third inning when Wade led off with a bunt single, advanced to third base on a hit-and-run single by Martín Maldonado through the hole on the right side and scored on Luis Arraez’s single the other way through the left side.
“I think when you win those (close) games, it’s not just preparing you for now, middle of the season,” Cronenworth said. “It’s preparing you for the end of the year. Those games are going to happen.”
It looked like last night might be the Padres’ fifth consecutive one-run game and MLB-leading 14th one-run victory. But Machado hit a home run in the eighth inning, so it ended up as their MLB-leading 22nd victory by two or fewer runs.
How the Padres won last night — how they have won quite a few times during their current 8-4 stretch and how they won quite a bit early in the season — is part of why it was so confounding that they could not find a way to win at least a couple of the games they lost in the middle of May.
But as their offense remained cold in that period, they started to press at times trying to make things happen.
Evidently, it was a lesson learned.
“We had a rough May,” Machado said. “So to get off on the right foot in June, you know, playing these games. … If we want to get to where we want to get to, we gotta continue to grow as a team and win these games. Because at the end of the day, that’s what wins championships. So it’s good to get back on that path. We kind of got off it a little bit. So good to see the team get together and play baseball like we’re capable of playing.”
Traffic cop
The walks are back.
They just aren’t biting Randy Vásquez like they did early in the season.
For most of the pitches that led to his four walks last night, Vásquez wasn’t missing by much.
In fact, he didn’t miss at all a few times. But home late umpire Edwin Moscoso had a fluctuating interpretation of the corners of the strike zone for almost every pitcher last night.
Nonetheless, Vásquez was back to having to get himself out of trouble he created.
“Navigated again, quite a bit of ‘Frogger,’” Shildt said. “Was able to tap dance around some walks.”
Yes, which makes Shildt’s clever analogy to the 1980s video not quite fit last night. The frog eventually is squashed every time in that game.
Vásquez worked 4⅔ scoreless innings last night, managing to escape damage despite the Brewers having seven baserunners against him (the walks, two singles and a hit batter).
“Runners on base has been my main problem this season,” said Vásquez, who has a 3.69 ERA. “But I know when I have traffic on, I have to limit the damage. So far, so good on that end.”
Vásquez’s 16.2% walk rate was the highest in the major leagues through his first seven starts. Then he walked just three of the 91 batters (3.3%) he faced over his next four starts before walking three in 3⅓ innings on Sunday against the Pirates.
Just one of the past 10 walks he has issued have contributed to a run.
In his first seven starts, 10 of his 24 walks and one of his two hit batters contributed to runs.
Among his 34 walks this season, Vásquez was ahead 0-1 12 times and had a 2-2 count 15 times.
“I think when I’m ahead in the count,” he said, “I try to do a little too much.”
Picking up Adam
What the Padres bullpen did last night was all the more remarkable in that it was accomplished without one of the team’s highest-leverage relievers.
Jason Adam was down after working nine of the previous 15 days.
“We’ve had Adam for a day on, day off, day on day off, day on, two days, day off, day on,” Shildt said. “And we made a decision after the last outing, like, ‘Look, man, we’ve got to give this guy a couple days.’ And it’s hard to stick to it, because he’s so effective, but it was easier stick to it when we had other guys that were rested and got their one-pluses in.”
That made it virtually imperative that Adrián Morejón be able to take down another inning after he ended the seventh with a strikeout. He did so, retiring the three batters he faced in the eighth inning on seven pitches.
Wandy Peralta replaced Vásquez and got the final out of the fifth inning and first out of the sixth. Jeremiah Estrada got the next four outs to lead into Morejón. Robert Suarez’s 1-2-3 ninth finished the shutout.
For keepsakes
Machado joked yesterday afternoon he should have hit his 350th career home run Thursday in San Francisco into one of the bullpens.
“It would have been easier” to get the ball back, he reasoned.
He should have just waited a day and hit it in Milwaukee.
Then he definitely would have gotten it back.
Machado gets booed in almost every city the Padres visit. Some more than others. No place comes close to American Family Field, where lustily booing every mention of his name has become a sport to the fans here in a way that probably has outgrown its genesis.
The boos stem from a play in the 2018 National League Championship Series in which Machado kicked Brewers first baseman Jesus Aguilar’s foot while running out a groundball.
For the record, Machado said, “It’s the same everywhere.”
That is his stock answer when asked about being booed. Nowhere else are fans as consistent and as enthusiastic as here.
Regardless, Machado hit his 351st home run last night. And the ball was thrown back onto the field.
He is still working on getting the ball he hit for No. 350 from a fan who reached out to him via Instagram saying he had it.
“I’d love to have it,” Machado said Friday. “I’m not sure if it’s that ball or not. He’s a true San Francisco fan. I can tell that. Hopefully, we can get something to happen. If not, whatever.”
Machado set aside the cleats, bat and batting gloves he wore when hitting Thursday’s homer. He has saved those items, along with the ball, from previous milestone hits.
Machado became just the 102nd player to reach 350 career home runs. Just eight players who played primarily at third base have ever had more.
Last night’s homer was also Machado’s 1,973rd hit. He will likely reach 2,000 hits in the coming weeks, making him just the 12th player to achieve the 350/2,000 double in his age-32 season.
Said Machado: “You start seeing these numbers racking up, it’s special.”
X back
Xander Bogaerts was 1-for-3 with a walk in his return to the lineup.
You can read an update on Bogerts’ shoulder soreness in our game preview (here) from yesterday afternoon.
He also began a double play that ended the second inning with a glove-to-glove flip to Cronenworth, getting Vásquez out of a jam with runners at the corners.
Even as he has begun 2025 with some of the worst offensive numbers of his career, Bogaerts’ defense the past month has been superb.
“I’ve got to do something to be in the lineup,” he said.
As for his offense, you might notice in this chart that he is not alone in his struggles:
King update
The initial thinking on starting pitcher Michael King’s absence when he started experiencing shoulder discomfort, later diagnosed as a pinched nerve, was that he could be out from two to six weeks.
It is looking like the latter, at least.
King was technically eligible to come off the injured list Friday. He is not on this trip and has, according to team officials, played catch off and on in San Diego for the past week.
“Michael is in a little bit of a holding pattern,” Shildt said yesterday. “… It’s one of these things where you’re not going to be able to do a whole lot until it starts to improve. It’s a slow and steady improvement at this point. So we’re in a little bit of a holding pattern of recovery and more of a discovery phase of being assertive in finding out exactly what it is and the best way to treat it, because it’s not something that is very common in our sport.”
Tidbits
- Maldonado was 2-for-4 with a double. It was one more hit and one more extra-base hit than he has had in his previous 22 at-bats dating to May 13.
- Brandon Lockridge pinch-hit for Wade in the seventh inning and singled. He replaced Wade in left field and finished 1-for-2. Lockridge is 5-for-10 over his past four games and is batting .236 on the season.
- The Padres not only have just two quality starts in their past two turns through the rotation, a starter has gone more than five innings just four times in that span. The starters have a 5.36 ERA over 50⅓ innings in that time. Padres relievers have a 1.13 ERA and have stranded 17 of their 24 inherited runners over 39⅔ innings in those 10 games.
- Dylan Cease wore a compression sleeve on his right (throwing) forearm Thursday but said he was “all good” after being hit by a 104 mph line drive on Thursday.
- Annie Heilbrunn wrote an interesting story (here) with some excellent insight from players that gives context to the scarcity of “older” players in the major leagues. The Padres have the third-oldest roster group of position players in the major leagues, with an average age of 30 years, four months.
- With their victory and the Dodgers’ loss to the Cardinals, the Padres moved to a game back in the NL West. The Padres and Dodgers play their first series of the season beginning Monday at Petco Park.
All right, that’s it for me.
No newsletter tomorrow. I often skip writing it on Saturday nights when there are seven games in a week. Plus, there is an early game (10:05 a.m. PT) and then a flight home tomorrow — and then the start of the Dodgers series.
We will still have the usual coverage on our Padres page today.
The next Padres Daily will be in your inbox Monday morning.
