Padres Daily: Not the usual loss; Pivetta doesn’t back off; nothing to show

Good morning from St. Louis,

That was not a good game.

You can read in my game story (here) about how the Padres messed up in almost every way in last night’s 3-0 loss to the Cardinals.

Only one of those ways was familiar.

The Padres did not get a hit in eight at-bats with runners in scoring position. That can’t be surprising to anyone who has been paying attention. They are batting .208 with runners in scoring position over their past 61 games, second-worst in the major leagues in that span.

But the game story details a crucial error, a bad decision on the basepaths and two plays that just weren’t up to the Padres’ usual level of sharpness, plus a hit batter and two walks that all ended up turning into Cardinals runs.

That was surprising.

The Padres have been able to tread water in the National League playoff chase despite their paltry offense because they don’t have many nights like last night.

Said manager Mike Shildt: “Usually, we’re on the other side … where we win a lot of close games, we win a lot of ball games (when) we don’t hit as much or when we get outhit, and everybody is like, ‘What’s going on with the hitting?’ Well, we played clean. We didn’t walk anybody. We didn’t beat ourselves. And (that) wasn’t the case tonight.”

It has been a rough start to this series.

On Thursday, the Padres lost a game 9-7. League-wide, teams have won 88% of the games in which they have scored seven runs this season.

The inability to sync up the game’s various phases has been costly.

The Padres were 3½ games up on the Cardinals, Giants and Reds on Monday.

But with the two strange losses here and the two (more common) one-run losses in Miami earlier in the week, the Padres have lost two games to the Cardinals and 2½ games to the Reds and Giants.

The Padres are 28-34 since May 14, which was the last time they were a season-high 12 games over .500.

This is reminiscent of 2022, when they went 37-42 from June 17 through Sept. 15 before winning nine of their next 14 games and clinching a playoff spot.

Shildt boldly proclaimed after last night’s game that all would be OK.

“We in that clubhouse know where we’re at,” he said. “We’re proving it. We know we’re gonna be a team that’s gonna push and make the playoffs. I don’t want to be overly confident about that, because we gotta go do it. But the point I’m getting at is we know what we have. There’s a lot of confidence in that. … We have to prove it. So I get that part. But I have complete confidence in this team. This team has complete confidence in itself.

“But starting tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and the day after that, every game is important. Every game. But no different, really, than the expectation in April. But we’ve got to get back and just put together a good, clean game and get a lead, and get our guys on the back end involved a little bit, and it’ll be right on track.”

Pivetta’s takes

A 94 mph fastball from Nick Pivetta that ran inside and hit the Cardinals’ Willson Contreras on the elbow guard in the second inning precipitated the benches clearing in the second inning.

Pivetta didn’t back down in the moment, and he didn’t backtrack after the game.

After Contreras was hit, he briefly glared out at Pivetta, who responded by telling him not to look at him. As Contreras walked toward first base yelling at Pivetta, who stared at him, Padres catcher Elias Díaz got between the two players and the benches and bullpens emptied.

“He’s been doing that for years,” Pivetta said. “I think he thinks that he owns a certain part of the plate. I mean it’s a fastball, and I don’t hit very many guys. For him to, like, stare at me and try, at least I feel from my side, he’s trying to intimidate me into trying to do stuff. That’s the player that he is. Doesn’t mean that he’s a bad player. He’s a great player. He does play baseball very well, but I’m not going to back down.

“I’m going to go out and do my thing. I’m going to control the inside part of the plate, which I have been doing. I hit him on the elbow guard. I mean, I haven’t gone back and looked at it, but I could probably guess that he was probably diving over the plate a little bit.”

Contreras, who has been hit by 15 pitches this season and by at least 12 each of the past six seasons, was not leaning and actually pulled back. Contreras explained his frustration was partly due to his missing four games after being hit in the hand by a Joe Musgrove pitch last April.

“The pitcher is trying to own that spot. Not me,” Contreras said. “Just unlucky, I think. Getting hit, it’s always me. That’s fine. … I’m not trying to get any fractures, because last year we played them, and they took me out for a week. This year is nothing different. None of them is going to feel sorry if I get a broken hand or a broken finger. … That’s why I take exception (to) that.”

The Padres and Cardinals cleared the benches after Nick Pivetta hit Willson Contreras with a pitch pic.twitter.com/Ku4b9bT3Qb

— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) July 26, 2025

After the teams milled about the infield for a few minutes and everyone went back to where they were supposed to be, the umpire crew met and warnings were issued to both teams. That meant a hit batter could result in the ejection of the offending pitcher and his manager.

Said Shildt: “The umpires … did the right thing, in the sense of — and I’m not a big warning guy, especially when we know it’s not intentional and there’s no history at all — but basically by pretty much a standard rule, as soon as the benches clear, you have to issue a warning.”

Pivetta was unhappy with that decision at the time and remained so afterward.

“The game just got soft,” Pivetta said. “I mean, it’s the (second) inning. Nobody’s trying to hit anybody there. Trying to play baseball. Guys have all this gear nowadays. They’re all over the plate. I think it’s just umpires and the league getting in the way of what we’re trying to accomplish on both sides. I mean, it affected their team just as much as it affected our team.

“I think it’s just in those situations, they’ve got to be a little more cognizant of what’s going on in the game. The game has been a certain way for a long time, and they’re trying to change stuff. I just think it’s kind of brutal, you know, especially early in the game.”

Pivetta still pitched inside, including a fastball that knocked down Yohel Pozo later in the second inning.

“I still went up and in right away and attacked the strike zone,” Pivetta said. “I can command the inside of the part of the plate. If I want to hit somebody, I’m going to hit somebody. If I want to throw a strike in there, or if I even want to throw a ball in there, you know, that’s what I do with my heater. So it doesn’t deter me from doing anything. Obviously, it’s just not fun. If a ball slips out of my hand and I accidentally hit a guy, even if it’s like a slider or a sweeper, it just makes … pitchers’ lives a little more difficult. And then the hitters know that maybe you’ll stay away from going there as much. And then they can hang over the plate a little bit more.

“Just puts it in a complete imbalance in the game. I wouldn’t be saying these things if it wasn’t the second inning, if there wasn’t something leading up to it. And I get that the umpires are just trying to do their jobs, and they get told certain things. But the game has been pure for so long, and it’s a good game. It’s a good game. Obviously nobody wants to hurt anybody out there, but there’s no malicious intent. It’s just pitching in baseball. That’s all it is.”

Nothing to show

The Padres had 11 hits last night.

“Normally if you have (that many) hits, especially us, we have a couple runs at least,” Xander Bogaerts said.

That seems obvious, right?

But it is still stunning how much so.

The Padres joined the Giants as the only teams this season (and the only MLB teams in the past seven seasons) to be shut out in a game in which they had at least 11 hits.

Just twice had a Padres team ever been shut out when having at least 11 hits.

Maybe it will make you feel better to know the last Padres team to have that good and bad of a game offensively was the 1998 squad.

Tough place

The Cardinals are 174-87 (.667) against the Padres in St. Louis, which is now the best home winning percentage in history by one National League team against another NL team.

That was not the case entering this series.

Before Thursday’s loss, the Padres’ winning percentage against the Cardinals here was .0001 better than the Rockies’ all-time record in San Francisco (90-178).

The Padres’ record in the current Busch Stadium, which opened in 2006, is 19-44 (306). They have lost 16 of their past 19 here.

Tidbits

• The Padres’ best starting pitcher lost yesterday. There are almost nothing but questions about the three pitchers who were supposed to be atop the rotation. But there is at least some progress regarding one of them. You can read my story (here) from yesterday afternoon about Michael King being scheduled to face hitters in a simulated game Monday.
• Contreras finished 2-for-2 with a double and a walk in addition to being hit by the pitch from Pivetta. His 1.176 OPS in 136 career plate appearances against the Padres is the highest by any player with at least 74 plate appearances against them since 2016.
• Last night was the fourth time in the past 11 games in which they have all played that Fernando Tatis Jr., Luis Arraez, Manny Machado, Jackson Merrill and Bogaerts all got at least one hit. They had done so just four times in the previous 49 games they all were in the lineup together.
• The bottom four spots in the order — “the back end” Shildt referred to in the quote from earlier in the newsletter — was 3-for-12. Those four spots accounted for five of the Padres’ hitless at-bats with runners in scoring position. Arraez was 0-for-2 with Tatis on second base and Machado was 0-for-1 in that circumstance.
• David Morgan allowed two hits but worked a scoreless eighth inning last night by getting a double play grounder to end the inning. It was the third time in his past four appearances (four innings) that Morgan has gotten a double play grounder.
• The Padres are tied for 21st in the major leagues with 30 quality starts. Pivetta has 13 of those, including last night.
• Tatis doubled twice last night and is 5-for-9 in the series. He is batting .333 with a .976 OPS over the past 16 games. Of his 42 balls in play in that span, 19 (45%) have been hit at 100 mph or harder. Just 28% of his balls in play were hit that hard in the 41 games preceding this stretch.
• Machado extended his multi-hit streak to three games by going 2-for-4 last night.
• Arraez was 1-for-4 last night and has hit in all seven games since the All-Star break. He is 12-for-32 (.375) during the streak.
• Bogaerts was 2-for-4 and is batting .333 (8-for-24) during a six-game hitting streak.
• Merrill was 1-for-4 to extend his hitting streak to six games. He is batting .300 (6-for-20) during the run.
• The Padres are 28-9 when having double-digit hits.
• If Dylan Cease gets traded and you end up having to say, “Dylan Cease, we hardly knew ye,” don’t blame Annie Heilbrunn. She did a Q&A with Cease (here) that will help you get to know him.

All right, that’s it for me.

No newsletter tomorrow. Why? Because it has been a long trip, there is a night game tonight and tomorrow is a day game with a flight home afterward.

We will have the usual coverage on our Padres page, but the next Padres Daily will be in your inbox Monday morning.

Talk to you then.