Padres Daily: Not their best against the best; easy does it; Is Freddy still ready?

Good morning from my layover,

Because there was no natural rival for either team, the Padres and Mariners were paired when Major League Baseball began interleague play in 1997.

So they have played each other in all but one season since then.

It has rarely been like this, with both teams being postseason contenders when they met in August or September. They have made the playoffs in the same year just once.

But as the Padres and Mariners concluded another season series yesterday, it was not preposterous to think they could meet again in a couple months.

If a World Series matchup came to pass, the Mariners have a couple attractive options to start Game 1 based on their numbers against the Padres.

Logan Gilbert, for instance, has a 1.69 ERA over five career starts against the Padres.

But it might be difficult to argue against Bryan Woo getting the first crack.

The Padres’ best performance against the 25-year-old right-hander saw them get six hits and two runs in 5⅔ innings yesterday. That raised his ERA in three career starts against them to 2.33 over 19⅓ innings.

That hardly tells the story of his excellence against them or indicates how well he might do against them in a postseason matchup.

Woo would not have been given the leash he was yesterday in a postseason game, as he hit a batter and the Padres got three singles against him to score a run in the sixth inning. One of the runners he left scored against reliever Gabe Speier, who would not have been the choice of Mariners’ manager Dan Wilson to work in that spot if this were October.

Woo held the Padres to five hits and a run over seven innings in May at Petco Park. And last September at T-Mobile Park, he took a perfect game into the seventh inning before yielding two runs.

The Padres would love to get the opportunity to try to figure out how to beat him in 2025.

And how to beat the Mariners, who won five of the teams’ six meetings this season and are 14-4 against the Padres over the past four seasons.

The matchup this week brought up more than just some fanciful “what if” regarding the Mariners.

The Padres are now 1-9 in road series against teams currently in playoff position and 6-11 in all series against such teams. At 26-35, they are the only team in playoff position that has a losing record against teams that are currently .500 or better.

Now, whether that is as troubling as it might seem is debatable. First, eight of those series were in April or May. The Padres have actually won four of their past six series against teams in playoff position.

And of those 61 games against teams that are .500 or better, 26 were started by pitchers who won’t be starting for the Padres in the playoffs.

Now, as yesterday’s newsletter (here) pointed out, we’re not quite sure what a Padres playoff rotation will look like.

And as my game story (here) from yesterday’s 4-3 loss highlighted, the inconsistency of the starting pitchers the Padres are counting on to provide quality innings is a far more pressing concern than which pitchers the Padres might face in the postseason.

The state of things

The Padres fell another game back in the race for the National League West. And their two-game deficit is actually three, since they need to finish a game ahead of the Dodgers after losing the season series to them.

The Padres also lost a game in their cushion over the Mets.

The positives to come from yesterday’s scoreboard watching is that the Padres did not lose any ground to the Cubs and the Reds lost another game in their quest to crack the top six.

The Padres’ playoff odds remained at 99.5%, according to FanGraphs.

And after playing 12 of their past 19 games against teams that are in playoff position, the Padres now play nine straight against losing teams.

They have the easiest remaining schedule of any MLB team. Just nine of their final 28 games are against teams with winning records, and 16 of those games are against four of the bottom six teams in the major leagues.

It can be dangerous to base too much on the supposed quality of an opponent. But if there has been one thing above all others to count on this season, it is that the Padres will take care of business against bad teams. Their 46-24 record against teams with losing records is tops in the majors.

The two step

The Padres’ regular No.2 hitter made the first out in yesterday’s ninth inning. The fill-in No.2 hitter made the final out.

Luis Arraez got most of yesterday off before pinch-hitting for Jose Iglesias in the ninth inning. In his place in the second spot in the batting order was Ramón Laureano.

I wrote in my postgame notebook (here) about Mike Shildt all but guaranteeing that this was a one-off and that he is not changing the lineup.

The reason Shildt sticks with Arraez so high in the order can be boiled down to his faith in Arraez and his belief that the lineup as it has been constructed lately is the one that best sets up the Padres for success.

The reason that is being questioned (mostly from the outside) is that Arraez is batting .190 (12-for-63) over his past 16 games and is 2-for-23 (with two sacrifice bunts and two sacrifice flies) in that span when Fernando Tatis Jr. reaches base in front of him.

Fred alert

The Padres do not play today, and Elias Díaz will catch for Nick Pivetta on Saturday.

That means Freddy Fermin gets two of the next three days off and won’t have to catch a day game after catching a night game this weekend in Minneapolis.

That is what Fermin did yesterday, as he caught for a third straight day and for the seventh time in the past eight days.

The Padres really meant it when they said they did not view Fermin as a backup catcher when they traded for him on July 31.

His 169 innings since Aug. 2 are second most by a catcher, one inning less than the Phillies’ J.T. Realmuto. (Realmuto has made at least 124 starts at catcher in five of the past eight full seasons and led MLB in innings caught in three of the past five seasons. Fermin has started 198 career games over four seasons.)

The 30-year-old Fermin has started 18 of the Padres’ 24 games (in 26 days) since his Padres debut on Aug. 2. Before this stretch, Fermin had never started more than 14 games at catcher in a 26-day stretch and had never started behind the plate four days in a row.

And where he was hitting .350 (14-for-40) through his first 12 games with the Padres, he has three hits in his past 24 at-bats (.125) over his past eight games.

We can’t definitively assess that his dropoff in offensive production is due to workload. But it is worth watching.

Tidbits

• With Jackson Merrill trending toward a return from the injured list this weekend, it is fair to wonder what the Padres will do with Gavin Sheets. The Padres’ former left fielder, who has once again become their left fielder while Laureano fills in for Merrill in center, was 2-for-4 yesterday and is batting .378 (14-for-37) with a 1.209 OPS in 13 games (10 starts) since Aug. 11. Sheets’ OPS is fourth highest in the major leagues among players with at least 40 plate appearances in that span.
• Tatis was 2-for-5 with an RBI double yesterday. He has reached base multiple times in 31 of his past 51 games, and his 16 doubles are tied for fourth in the major leagues while his .407 on-base percentage is fifth highest in MLB in that span (since June 29).
• Jake Cronenworth was 1-for-2 with a double and a walk yesterday. His .427 OBP since July 26 (29 games) is seventh highest in MLB in that span.
• Manny Machado was 0-for-4 yesterday and is batting .205 (16-for-78) with a .553 OPS over the past 20 games.
• Before fouling a ball off his left foot in the eighth inning, which is addressed in my notebook, Bogaerts set a new career high with his 20th stolen base.
• Tatis’ uncontested steal of third base in the ninth inning was his 27th stolen base of the season, two off his career high set in 2023. It was his 11th steal of third, tied with Jose Caballero for most in the majors.
• Yuki Matsui retired all four batters he faced yesterday after retiring all six batters he faced Monday. The left-hander had allowed at least one baserunner in 22 of his previous 24 appearances.
• The Padres’ 29-18 record in day games remains tops in MLB.

All right, that’s it for me.

No game today, so no newsletter. I will have a story on our Padres page today on the Padres’ different kind of lineup.

The next newsletter will be in your inbox Saturday morning. Talk to you then.