Padres Daily: Winning their way; Sheets stays true; Bogaerts update; Peralta finishes

Good morning,

This was the real Padres.

This is how they win.

They got to an opponents’ bullpen and decided the game with small ball.

You can read about how that all went down in my game story (here) from last night’s 4-3 victory over the Reds.

It was pretty much right out of the Padres’ 2025 textbook.

Sure, you can wish it was different. It may not end up being enough.

But winning the way the Padres did said a lot more about their postseason readiness than scoring 18 runs in two victories in Colorado over the weekend.

This was getting better as the game went along, one of manager Mike Shildt’s core tenets. This was stacking good at-bats until they built something.  This was a decent start by Yu Darvish backed up by six relievers throwing 4⅓ scoreless innings.

The Padres scored the game’s final four runs. Three of those came with two outs in the sixth inning. The final run came in the 10th inning when the automatic runner moved to third base on a sacrifice bunt and scored on a sacrifice fly.

That was fun! @Padres #ForTheFaithful pic.twitter.com/l6MxkYPcI1

— Don Orsillo (@DonOrsillo) September 9, 2025

“I honestly appreciated coming back tonight more than just blowing them out,” said Jackson Merrill, whose two-run triple tied the game. “It proved a lot in us, our determination and what we wanted to do this year. Not giving up after we go down three, it means a lot.  … It proved we’re locked in the whole game.”

Beating the Reds in a normal ballpark when left-hander Nick Lodolo pitched magnificently doesn’t count any more than a victory at Coors Field. Those two victories got the Padres back on track after five consecutive losses and nine defeats in a span of 11 games.

But last night’s win was far more telling.

“We were in a tough stretch, and I said we need to get out of it as soon as possible,” said Gavin Sheets, whose second double of the game drove in the Padres’ first run. “And the bats have come alive, the pitching is throwing really well, and I feel like we’re playing complete baseball on both sides of the ball. Obviously, we weren’t doing that for a little stretch there, and for us to come together as a team and switch that around really quick and play some good baseball right now is great.”

Hitting four home runs Sunday against the Rockies was a mile-high mirage. Yes, it was the third time in 18 games the Padres have hit four home runs. But two of the four games in which they have homered that many times this season have come at Colorado.

Last night, the Padres once again did not hit a home run at Petco Park while their opponent did. It’s a tough place to hit a ball over the wall. But visiting teams have out-homered the Padres 74-59 there this season.

Sure, they could use some more home runs. They have the second-fewest homers in the major leagues and derive the lowest percentage of their runs from homers.

They are 23-34 when they do not hit a home run this season. That is the third-best record in the major leagues but still well below .500.

Lack of slug may end up haunting them in the postseason. But it is too late to lament that.

They may well yet win games with a bunch of home runs. It would not be all that surprising. They have a number of players that should be hitting more homers.

Shildt said wryly before the game, “We’re not anti-homer.”

Of course not. But they are sort of ambivalent about home runs, even if that is more of a concession than a choice.

And that is the way it is. It is who they are.

And here they are, six games clear of the Giants, against whom they hold the tiebreaker and seven games clear of the Reds.

Whether or not they pass the Dodgers to win the National League West and who and where they play in the wild-card round seem like the only real questions to be answered over the regular season’s final 18 games.

The Padres are headed to the playoffs. If they go .500 the rest of the way, they will finish with 88 wins, which would be tied for ninth most in franchise history.

If they are able to follow the formula they did last night and have so often this season, they have a real chance to finish even better and to not actually be finished for a while after that.

Staying true

Sheets was clear about what was important to him from the start.

He signed with the Padres in early February because he felt being a complementary piece on a winning team was the best way for him to revive his career.

“To be back a part of this is exactly why I wanted to be here,” he said last night of being in a playoff chase. “We talked about it in April and May, and now to be in September and be in a spot that I hoped to be in is awesome.”

Sheets has revived his career, and he has worked his way from being a complementary piece to a spare part to being among the biggest contributors on the Padres’ offense.

“Gavin has been our MVP of the year,” Merrill said. “Him and Manny both have been on fire all year.”

Well, not exactly.

Sheets did lead the Padres in RBIs through the second week of June before Manny Machado took over. Sheets was fading when he was replaced in the lineup after the trade deadline. Machado has faded since the trade deadline.

After starting two of the Padres’ 16 games at the start of August, Sheets got back in the lineup when Merrill went down with an ankle injury and has made himself impossible to sit since.

What Merrill’s remark does bring to mind is that, depending on how the next three weeks go, there might not be a clearcut team MVP.

Here are four candidates, ranked in order of their fWAR but with some other interesting statistics to consider.

Regardless, what Sheets has done has been as important to the Padres as it has been remarkable for him.

He was 3-for-3 with two doubles and a walk last night. It was his 19th career game with at least three hits, nine of which have come this season. It was his ninth career game reaching base at least four times, five of which have come this season. It was his team-leading ninth game this season with multiple extra-base hits after he had 10 such games in his first four seasons.

A .168/.216/.242 hitter in 176 plate appearances against left-handed pitchers in his first four seasons, he is batting .280/.317/.415 against them in 126 plate appearances this season. That batting average is actually 15 points higher than he is hitting against righties this year.

His 19 home runs in 2025 are not only a career high, the total is one less than he hit in 335 more plate appearances from 2023 to ‘24.

“I think it helps when you just care about winning, care about what you’re gonna do that night,” Sheets said. “And helping your team get a win is the most important thing, and playing important baseball all the way through the season, so that’s been the biggest thing.”

King returns

Michael King will start tonight’s game.

You can read about what he and the Padres expect and a recap of his season in my story from yesterday (here).

King acknowledged how “frustrating” this season has been and that he has been “jealous” of his teammates as he has watched them play.

All that is left for him is contributing to a winning season. To him winning means one outcome.

“Whether it was a fully healthy season or not,” he said, “if we don’t win the World Series, it’s an unsuccessful season. … Me being hurt the whole year is obviously not great, but it’s a win-win for the team if I pitch well in the playoffs. So it’s all about contributing and making sure that we’re a championship team at the end of the year.”

Bogaerts update

Shortstop Xander Bogaerts will get imaging done on his fractured left foot tomorrow. That will be two weeks since he suffered the injury. If the healing is sufficient, he could start jogging soon thereafter.

He still believes he can return before the end of the regular season.

“I feel like that would be huge, seeing big-league pitching,” Bogaerts said. “… Just playing in some games before we possibly make the playoffs will be good.”

Peralta at the end

Shildt spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about who might be second-guessing him and what they are second-guessing him about. Oftentimes, he seems to be imagining that people are doing so.

So he, without a doubt, was aware in the moment he was opening himself to being second-guessed last night when he pulled closer Robert Suarez in the 10th inning and tasked Wandy Peralta with getting the final out in the top of the 10th inning with a man on second base.

The left-handed Peralta retired left-handed-hitting TJ Friedl on a fly ball to left field to preserve a 3-3 tie and set the Padres up for the win in the bottom of the inning.

Suarez had thrown just 15 pitches, but he had also gotten more than three outs for just the fifth time this season.

“We had asked Robert to do something he hasn’t done a lot,” Shildt explained of his rationale. “… It’s not something that we’ve asked him to do consistently. Yeah, he had been efficient with his pitches, and he’d done his part, and then at that point you go, ‘You’ve done your part.’ … Asked him to go grab two righties (at the start of the 10th). He grabbed them. We had Wandy sitting there for Friedl, and that’s how it went down. I knew I left myself open some second- guessing, but that’s OK. That’s the job, right? But, you know, it was the plan the whole inning.”

Peralta has actually been mostly excellent in that situation this season, though none in such a high-leverage circumstance.

He went through a nine-game stretch last month in which he allowed all six of the runners he inherited to score.

Before that, though, he ranked among the top 10 in MLB in inherited runners stranded (30 of 38). That included his coming into successive games in July with the bases loaded and getting the final out in the inning both times without allowing a run to score.

“I’m very happy to be in that moment to get a big out,” Peralta said. “I’m just happy they had the confidence to put me in that situation. I’ve been through this situation before. … Most importantly, every single time I’m out there, I’m prepared, I’m ready to go. Sometimes things happen, things get away from you and you can’t control anything. But when you’re prepared, you’re able to help out your team, and this is the type of situation you work for.”

The SSituation

Jose Iglesias was back starting at shortstop last night, a day after Jake Cronenworth started there Sunday.

And after pinch-hitting for Iglesias in the ninth inning last night, Shildt put Mason McCoy at shortstop in the 10th. That kept Cronenworth at second base, where Shildt believes he best serves the Padres defensively.

That is consistent with what Shildt has said since Bogaerts went on the IL — that defense will generally be his priority.

The Padres do face a right-hander tonight, same as they faced Sunday.

Iglesias went 0-for-3 last night. He is batting .223 with a .563 OPS on the season, including .212 and .481  against right-handers.

Shildt went with Cronenworth at shortstop Sunday based on the handedness of the opposing starter and Padres starter Dylan Cease’s propensity for inducing fly balls rather than an abundance of grounders.

“It’s very fluid,” Shildt said of the infield alignment. “There’s a lot of factors to it. There’s other players involved with it.”

Yu rebounds

The Padres maintained there was a Pitchcom malfunction on the pitch Friedl hit over the right field wall for a lead-off home run.

It remained unclear after talking with some of the principles exactly what happened.

“He wasn’t necessarily hearing what I was calling,” Darvish said of catcher Freddy Fermin.

Iglesias said the call he heard in his ear was “distorted.”

Darvish said he ultimately went with a curve to Friedl because the call for the two-seamer he wanted to throw was not going through to Fermin.

Now, communication had nothing to do with Darvish hanging that curveball in the heart of the strike zone.

The Pitchcom issue was resolved after that, and Darvish ended up finishing 5⅔ innings while allowing three runs on six hits.

“I was happy with the way I was throwing,” said Darvish, who had allowed four runs in four innings in both of his previous two starts. “It was coming out very nicely from my hands from the second, third inning.”

The outing by Darvish continued a run of good starts for the Padres after a horrid stretch.

“One thing we ask of the starters is to give us a chance to win a ballgame, and most of the time they do,” Shildt said before yesterday’s game. “We went through a stretch that wasn’t as good, and (that) magnifies the fact that we’ve done some pretty good things over the course of the year. … (The game) is not built to get more innings out of your relievers than your starters. When (starters) can get at least half the game — or a little bit more; in some cases, a lot more, but at least a little bit more —  it sets us up for success.”

The Padres are 56-21 when their starting pitcher goes at least five innings while allowing three or fewer runs.

It fell

Merrill entered last night’s game batting .469 on balls he put in play at 95 mph or harder. That is 16 points below the MLB average on hard-hit balls.

So when he drilled a 98.6 mph fly ball deep to right-center field that hung up in the air for a while as Friedl, the Reds’ center fielder, ran 99 feet to almost get to it, Merrill had one thought.

“Please, once this year, don’t catch the ball,” he recalled thinking.

Friedl dove and had the ball bounce off his glove just in front of the warning track, as Merrill sprinted to third base with his team-leading fifth triple of the season.

San Diego is rocking after Jackson Merrill ties it with a triple off TJ Friedl’s glove! pic.twitter.com/0V3g9ps9Xd

— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) September 9, 2025

Tidbits

• Adrian Morejón stranded a runner on second base that he inherited from Jeremiah Estrada with two outs in last night’s seventh inning. Morejón has stranded 35 of the 39 runners he has inherited, a 10.3% scoring rate that is second best in the major leagues behind the Dodgers’ Ben Casparius (3.4%, 1-of-29).
• Estrada’s two strikeouts increased his NL-leading total among relievers to 94.
• Darvish got seven strikeouts last night, four of them looking. Eight of his 13 strikeouts over the past two games have been looking.
• Tatis stole his 28th base, which puts him one away from tying his career high set in 2023.
• Ramón Laureano’s eight-game hitting streak, during which he hit .375 (12-for-32), came to an end last night. Laureano did walk and score the game-tying run in the sixth inning.
• Machado was 0-for-4 last night. After batting .222 in August, he is batting .138 (4-for-29) in September.
• Last night was the ninth time this season the Padres have come back from three runs down to win. That is tied for sixth most in the major leagues.
• The Padres’ seven walk-off wins are tied for 10th most in MLB. They had 10 last year (tied for fourth) after having two (tied for last) in 2023.
• The Padres are 7-4 in extra innings. Their 10-2 record in extra innings led MLB last season after they finished 2-12 in ‘23, which was the second-worst record in MLB that year.
• The Padres improved to 59-19 when scoring four or more runs this season. That .756 winning percentage is ninth best in MLB. But the 78 games are tied for 10th fewest.

All right, that’s it for me.

Talk to you tomorrow.