Padres Daily: About time to start playing better; road worriers; Shildt’s 750th

Good morning,

The Padres need to play better.

That is what September is for.

They ended August poorly, losing two of three to a lousy team over the weekend to wrap up a 2-4 road trip.

The lamentable part about the series against the Twins was that they did not play well in Friday’s loss.

The Padres were simply bested yesterday by a good pitcher and undone by one of their own pitchers serving up a thigh-high changeup to the only hitter in the Twins lineup that could do real damage.

After Kyle Hart gave Byron Buxton that gift and Jeremiah Estrada and Wandy Peralta could not hold the deficit where it was, the plan for a bullpen day unraveled in a 7-2 loss.

You can read about all that in my game story (here).

Sunday ended a somewhat confounding first month post-trade deadline for the Padres.

They went 4-3 at the start of August, then won five straight, then lost four in a row, then won five more and have gone 2-5 since.

The chart below shows an incongruous month between the offense and pitching staff. But note that in none of the stretches did the Padres offense average fewer than 4.5 runs per game.

“We just haven’t really played complete baseball with everyone rolling at the same time, with our lineup, (starting) pitching and bullpen kind of doing everything solid,” Manny Machado said yesterday afternoon. “I think it’s kind of been just a little sporadic. … We’ve just gotta keep playing some good baseball and get hot when we need to get hot, at the right time.”

The Padres made a costly error in two of the four losses on the trip. The loss that started this seven-game stretch featured numerous missed chances to add on before a late bullpen blowup. They were 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position before getting two hits in three chances in the way-too-late ninth inning yesterday.

But there was no bigger problem than the starting pitching.

The Padres got 20 innings from their starting pitchers in the first five games on this road trip. Their four lower-leverage relievers ended up pitching 19⅓ innings in the six games, 10 more innings than their five high-leverage relievers. That was because no starter made it past five innings and four didn’t make it through five and the Padres were trailing by four or more runs by the sixth inning in all four losses.

The good news is the five guys at the back end of the bullpen are rested.

Mason Miller worked the ninth inning yesterday because he didn’t want to go a fifth day without pitching. Robert Suarez has not pitched since Tuesday. Jason Adam’s only work since then was taking down the seventh inning Saturday with the Padres ahead by seven runs.

“Just got to pick it up,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said. “Just like that. Nothing crazy. The offense, we put it out there, but obviously we’ve got to pitch and we’ve got to play defense. So just take care of what needs to be taken care of, and we’re going to be in a good spot.”

It’s as simple as that, as Tatis often says, even though he surprisingly did not in this instance. (I believe “Nothing crazy” has supplanted “Simple as that” for the time being.)

So, anyway, they need to play better. At some point.

Look, the starting pitching has to get its act together. But reacting too much to results now is bound to frustrate and is probably misplaced angst.

The 2024 Dodgers began September by losing seven of 12. The 2023 Rangers went 10-20 from mid-August to mid-September. The 2021 Braves endured a 3-6 stretch in the middle of September. The 2019 Nationals went 3-7 in early September.

We could go on. But you get it, right? All those teams were World Series winners.

The Padres’ playoff chances sit at 99.3%, according to Fangraphs.

The Dodgers and Mets, the team the Padres are chasing in the National League West and the team chasing them in the NL wild-card race, also lost series to teams with losing records this weekend.

Road weary

The 204-point difference in the Padres’ winning percentage at home (.662) and on the road (.458) is the second-highest home-road differential in the major leagues.

Is that troubling?

Well, it isn’t reassuring when considering the Padres could have to win a wild-card series on the road and potentially never have homefield advantage for as long as they advance.

But seven of the past 36 playoff teams have had losing road records in the regular season. The 2022 Phillies advanced to the World Series by winning four of their six road games en route to the NL pennant, and the 2023 Rangers won it by going 11-0 on the road in the postseason.

Now, both those teams were just 40-41 on the road in those seasons.

The Padres are on pace to have the worst road record by a team with a winning overall record since the 2016 Yankees, who won 84 total games and finished 36-45 (.444) away from Yankee Stadium.

So why is this happening and what can be done about it?

The answer to that is evidently far more complicated than you might think and worth more than $451.1 million paid over 15 years.

“I don’t have that answer,” Machado said. “II mean, if I did, I’d be a billionaire. I shouldn’t be playing baseball if I had that answer. Literally, if I had that answer, I wouldn’t be playing baseball. I’d be doing something else. Because you’d be a (expletive) genius for figuring that one out. My job is to play baseball. If I knew the answer to that question, or if I knew the answer to whatever it is, quantum physics. …”

Or maybe it is a little more basic than that.

“Obviously the energy at home is incredible, and we’ve got to find a way to match that on the road,” Gavin Sheets said. “It’s not easy. When we play in front of 48,000 at home and it’s rocking, it’s easy to give it up for that and bring it every night. We’ve just got to find a way to do that on the road. I think that’s something we’ll figure out, and that’s what we got to do.”

The Padres host the Orioles the next three games, then go to Colorado for three before playing 13 of their final 19 games at Petco Park.

“There’s no place like home,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said. “We’ve got amazing fans. And we’ve got a great vibe there. We’re comfortable there. We love the energy there, and we perform well there. We’re excited about getting home.”

Good start

Shildt managed his 750th career game yesterday and his 299th with the Padres.

Only Jack McKeon, who went 172-127 in his first 299 games with the Padres from 1988 to ’90, has started out his tenure with the franchise better than Shildt (169-130).

Shildt’s 421-329 record with the Padres and Cardinals is good for a .561 winning percentage, sixth best over the first 750 games of a career among all managers who began their careers in the past 40 seasons.

Musgrove update

Joe Musgrove is still working with the intent of pitching in October.

But he knows that might not happen.

Or maybe it will simply be in the Arizona Fall League. Or maybe the Fall League will be what gets him ready to pitch some postseason innings. Or maybe he will pitch in the Dominican Winter League later in the offseason to get ready for 2026.

“I’m still cautious that a lot can go wrong between now and then, so I’m not too far ahead of myself,” Musgrove said Sunday. “And the expectation doesn’t change the way I work. I’m still working just as hard as if I did have the expectation of pitching. But the stress of the expectation isn’t there.”

Musgrove, who is returning from the Tommy John surgery he had last October, has thrown seven or eight bullpen sessions. That is about halfway through the anticipated number he will throw before advancing to facing hitters in a live batting practice setting. He is introducing different pitches and gradually increasing his intensity during the twice-weekly bullpens.

Tidbits

• Tatis grabbed briefly at his right hamstring and appeared to hobble away from a play after running in to try to catch a bloop single in the seventh inning. He finished the inning but was removed as part of mass substitutions Shildt made with the Padres down by seven runs. Shildt said Tatis was fine. Tatis was walking without a limp after the game and said he was experiencing “just a little bit of tightness, nothing crazy.” He said he planned to play Monday.
• Sheets had two hits (including a double) yesterday and has hit in seven straight games. He is batting .524 (13-for-25) during the streak and .438 (21-for-48) with a 1.272 OPS over his past 16 games.
• Sheets has 12 extra-base hits (eight doubles, four home runs) in his past 19 games, which dates to July 30. That is an extra-base hit every 2.8 at-bats in that span.
• Jake Cronenworth also extended his hitting streak to seven games with a ninth-inning double yesterday. He is batting .474 (9-for-19) during the streak.
• Bryce Johnson replaced Tatis  in the lineup in the eighth inning, playing center field while Ramón Laureano moved over to right. Johnson hit an RBI single in the ninth inning and is batting .333 (18-for-54) with a .379 on-base percentage since his call-up in mid-June.
• Tatis (0-for-4) did not reach base for the first time in 12 games and just the second time in 21 games.
• Machado has struck out in seven consecutive games, and his 12 strikeouts in that span are tied for his most over the course of seven games since he joined the Padres in 2019.
• A ninth-inning double by Freddy Fermin was his third hit in his past 29 at-bats over a span of 10 games. The 30-year-old Fermin has started at catcher in 21 of the Padres’ 26 games since Aug. 2, third most in the major leagues in that span and more than he has ever started in a 30-day stretch.
• Five of the past 10 home runs given up by Padres pitchers have been preceded by that pitcher walking a batter.
• The Padres rotation will stay on turn for the series against the Orioles. That means Dylan Cease, Yu Darvish and Nestor Cortes, respectively, will start.

All right, that’s it for me. Early game today (3:40 p.m. PT).

Talk to you tomorrow.