PADRES DAILY: NO REGRESSION; KING’S LESSON; ESTRADA’S RECOVERY; MOREJóN’S CONFIDENCE

Good morning from DFW,

The Padres are home for eight games in the next 10 days.

They will host the Diamondbacks, Mariners and Braves in the final stretch before the All-Star break.

Then Jurickson Profar will head back to Texas to start in left field for the National League in the All-Star game on the same field where he and the Padres wrapped up a series win yesterday.

It was a good few days here for Profar, as he played against the team that signed him as a 16-year-old and for which he made his major league debut 12 years ago.

On Wednesday, Profar was officially named a starter in his first All-Star game and went 2-for-4. Yesterday, he scored the Padres’ first two runs, one of them on a solo homer, and denied the Rangers what would have been their first run with a throw to the plate.

You can read in my game story (here) about that and what else went down in a 3-1 Padres victory.

As noted in that story, it really cannot be overstated how important Profar has been to the Padres.

Much of that has to do with games like yesterday, in which he drove in his team-leading 56th run and his team-leading ninth game-deciding run.

But he has not only gotten an abundance of timely hits, he has said the things that need to be said privately and publicly.

You remember the story I wrote (here) after talking to him in Philadelphia near the end of a 1-5 road trip in mid-June.

“We just have to play better,” he said then.

I noted that there was no way he was saying the things he did to a reporter and not saying them in the clubhouse.

The Padres have won 11 of their past 14 games.

“Now we are here,” he said yesterday, “and I don’t expect anything less from this team.”

Profar’s focus now is on the Padres maintaining their ascension.

“There is no going back,” he said. “I will be mad at everybody if we don’t play at this level.”

King learning

Michael King is focused on what he needs to do to get where he intends to go.

So he was unaware he had set some significant career marks yesterday.

“No idea,” he said.

King entered yesterday’s game against the Rangers five innings shy of tying his career high for innings in a season. He lasted 5⅓ innings.

“I wish I had two-thirds of an inning more than I did today,” he said. “I wanted to finish that sixth. But lost it a little bit there.”

King did leave with the Padres ahead, and he got credit for the win, his career-high seventh.

In his first season as a full-time starter, what the 29-year-old right-hander is interested in is improvement.

“I knew coming into this year it was going to be a year that I really tried to learn as much as I can about starting pitching … and almost prove to myself that I can go that many innings and be a full-time workhorse,” he said. “But there are a lot of things that I need to do right to be able to go that distance — go 180 innings, go 200 innings.”

Yesterday was King’s 18th start in 2024, officially one less than he had made in his career entering this season but twice as many actual starts (without a strict pitch limit) than he had made previously. He is at 105 innings and is 7-5 with a 3.51 ERA.

The Padres will use their nine off days over the next month to work in some extra rest for King. But as long as he maintains his velocity and other key indicators of his strength, they have no other plans for him to rest.

He has said he is shooting for 180 innings. Pitching coach Ruben Niebla believes closer to 150 is more likely.

King has gone at least seven innings and allowed one or zero runs in four starts and has four other quality starts.

He was not so much perturbed by his finish yesterday as he was by the middle portion of the game. After getting through the first two innings in 26 pitches, he was at 81 pitches after five innings.

That his 120 strikeouts are fourth most in the National League is not an unqualified positive.

“I didn’t ‘lose it’ in those middle innings,” he said. “But instead of having the 10-, 12- 15-pitch innings, there (were) 20-pitch innings. I will still wouldn’t give up a base runner, but it’d be a 20-pitch inning  because I had an eighth-pitch at-bat and a nine-pitch at-bat. It’s more of making sure that my attack plan is whenever I get into like a 2-2 count where the guy is fouling it off, just go right to the pitch that I know I can get them on the ground and put them in play (with) soft contact.

“I think that I fell into it a couple times today, where I’d get to that two-strike count and then just go for the chase. And then all of a sudden it’s a 3-2 count, and now my pitch count is up. So I need to limit how many times I really go for the punchout. … I think that would have given me the end of the sixth inning.”

Rotation equation

The Padres’ starting pitchers for the series against the Diamondbacks are Randy Vasquez (today), Matt Waldron (tomorrow) and Dylan Cease (Sunday).

Vasquez ended up being pushed back just one day after leaving his start last Friday in Boston when a line drive hit him in the right (throwing) forearm.

With the Padres having been off this past Monday and being off again Monday and Thursday next week, Cease will be the only Padres starter who has to pitch on less than five days’ rest at least through the first series after the All-Star break.

Pushing through

Jeremiah Estrada said yesterday morning he is eating (carefully) again but that doctors still don’t know what exactly caused the illness that began June 9 and has him down about 17 pounds to 210.

Then he went out and pitched for the second consecutive day, allowing one of the two runners he inherited from King to score in the sixth inning before working a scoreless seventh.

Estrada allowed eight runs over five appearances (4⅓ innings) in the middle of June, shortly after getting sick. He has not been charged with a run over his past five appearances (5⅓ innings).

His fastball velocity is down slightly, but he is still topping 97 mph occasionally.

“Just pushing through,” he said. “Of course I’m out of shape and a lot weaker, not lifting as much or doing as much as I used to. But I’m just doing what I can to maintain it. I’m just different when it comes to the mound. I’m feeling it, but at the end of the day, it’s what I need to do.”

Morejón’s confidence

Padres manager Mike Shildt clearly believes in left-hander Adrián Morejón.

With lefty Wandy Peralta rested, Shildt used Morejón for a second straight day when he needed someone to get through the three left-handed batters at the top of the Rangers’ lineup in yesterday’s eighth inning.

A day after taking 16 pitches to retire all five batters he faced Wednesday, Morejón worked a scoreless inning yesterday.

After lead-off batter Josh Smith reached on an infield single, Morejón got out of the inning on a lineout, a groundout that moved Smith to second base and a strikeout.

The thing that has become increasingly apparent — as I wrote (here) recently — is that a maturing Morejón has gained a belief in himself.

A runner reaching as Smith did has occasionally rattled Morejón, who would sometimes become easily frustrated. Increasingly, he has navigated through the kind of situation he did yesterday.

“Maybe I have the confidence that I didn’t have earlier this season,” said Morejón, who turned 25 in February and worked his 79th big-league game yesterday. “If a batter gets a hit off of me or gets on base, I maintain my focus.”

Morejon has a 2.39 ERA over 37⅔ innings (29 games) this season, as he has increasingly been used in higher-leverage situations.

Getting it done

Ha-Seong Kim finished 0-for-3 yesterday but had one of the most productive clutch plate appearances of the game.

Kim, who hit a fly ball to left field that Wyatt Langford caught at the top of the wall in the second inning and lined out to Smith at third base at 103.8 mph in the fourth inning, drove in the Padres’ third run with a sacrifice fly in the seventh inning.

Kim fell behind 0-2 before fouling off a sinker and watching three balls to get to a full count against José Ureña. Kim then lined a ball to center field to score Donovan Solano.

“I feel like I’ve been doing pretty well,” Kim said. “So I was confident I wasn’t going to strike out. That confidence led me to getting that run in even though I was down 0-2.”

No one in the major leagues has the combination of a contact rate (84.9 percent) as high as Kim and a chase rate (18.2 percent) as low as Kim.

Didn’t work, still OK

Maybe you were like some of those watching who felt Profar wasted an opportunity to drive in a run when he laid down a sacrifice bunt in the eighth inning with runners at first and second and the Padres up 3-1.

After Tyler Wade and Luis Arraez began the inning with singles, Profar took it upon himself to move them both up by pushing a ball down the third base line.

While the thinking was that all it was going to take after that was a ball to the outfield by contact hitter Jackson Merrill to score an insurance run, it was not crazy to wonder whether the NL’s second-leading hitter should have swung away instead of bunting. That only seemed to make more sense when Merrill struck out and Manny Machado grounded out to strand both runners.

Shildt was not among those lamenting Profar’s decision.

Said Shildt: “I’d rather he be a winning player and play that game.”

Tough luck

It has been a rough go for Fernando Tatis Jr. and the All-Star game.

And that is a shame, because his appreciation for being a major league ballplayer — a part of its history, a contributor to its beauty — is clear.

He was one of the main attractions at the 2021 All-Star game in Denver. He was also a wide-eyed kid.

“The All-Star game is supposed to be the best players in the same  game to be facing each other,” he said last month as he anticipated his selection to this year’s National League squad. “It’s rewarding when you show up to the All-Star game and you’re right next to the best players in the game that year. I’m looking forward to it. … Those are moments that you’re definitely going to take when you go back home and you retire from the game and then you can make stories to your kids, your grandkids. It’s definitely something you work for.”

That is the only All-Star game Tatis has been to.

It could be argued he was snubbed twice — his rookie season in 2019 and 2022 when he began the season late while serving the remainder of his PED suspension.

Both times, his stats could have justified a selection.

This year, he was voted in by fans as a starter and would have become the first player ever to start one All-Star game at shortstop and another in the outfield. But he is sidelined at least until August by a stress reaction in his femur.

Tatis was not on this road trip, as he remained in San Diego resting.

Tidbits

• Solano was 3-for-4 yesterday. The 36-year-old, who initially signed a minor-league deal in April and will make $1.58 million this season, is batting .296 with a .361 on-base percentage. All three hits yesterday came with two strikes, and his .299 average with two strikes is best in the majors leagues among anyone with more than 26 at-bats that went to two strikes.
• David Peralta, whose two-run homer provided the winning margin in Wednesday’s game, started in right field for a second straight day and went 1-for-3 yesterday. He was replaced by Bryce Johnson for defensive purposes in the eighth inning, which was three innings after the 36-year-old Peralta ran 119 feet to make a sliding catch on the dirt along the side wall.
• The Rangers’ 11 doubles were the most in a three-game series against the Padres since the Giants had 13 in 2019.
• Merrill went 0-for-4 yesterday while batting third for the first time in his career. He was there — just his fourth time batting higher than sixth — as a replacement for fellow left-handed hitter Jake Cronenworth, who is 0-for-19 in his career against Rangers starter Max Scherzer.
• Joe Musgrove, on the injured list since June 1 with elbow inflammation, continued to play long toss yesterday. He said he will likely begin throwing at a shorter distance, which will invcrease the stress on his arm, in the coming days. The Padres are targeting an August return for Musgrove.

All right, that’s it for me.

Talk to you tomorrow. Maybe. I might change my travel plans and surprise my wife where she is vacationing. (Don’t worry, she doesn’t read the newsletter. I’m not entirely sure she even knows what I do for a living.)

If she is lucky enough to see me today, then I’ll be back tomorrow’s game and will talk to you Sunday.

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Thank you.

Now I’m finished for today. Have a good one.

©2024 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

2024-07-05T14:03:57Z dg43tfdfdgfd