Padres Daily: Manny’s Padre strength; King keeps going strong; Tatis’ running

Good morning,

Manny Machado got his dad strength, eventually.

“It took me a little bit,” he said. “I thought it was supposed to be right away. It took me a few months. Guys say it’s instantly, but I guess mine was put on the back burner.”

Well, that did have a lot to do with his working through the effects of offseason elbow surgery before (and for a while after) his son was born in late April.

Machado is lifting the Padres pretty well now. He has been for some time.

He hit two homers and drove in three of the Padres’ runs in a 5-1 victory over the Giants last night.

The Padres improved to 24-0 this season when he has multiple RBIs.

And here is an update of how they have fared since Machado started hitting like the back of his baseball card says he should:

The beauty of the Padres this season, as I wrote about earlier this week in a piece (here) that was ostensibly about the culture change within the club, is that they are not just Machado’s team anymore.

The Padres were just 37-40 on June 18, when Machado was batting .245 with a .662 OPS. But in past years (last year), it is a safe bet that record would have been worse with Machado being all but a nonfactor.

To that point, it was Jurickson Profar (47 RBIs, 10 homers, .904 OPS), Jake Cronenworth (46 RBIs, 10 homers, .748 OPS) and Fernando Tatis Jr. (35 RBIs, 13 homers, .806 OPS) carrying the team (with the occasional lift from Jackson Merrill and Donovan Solano and others).

Even then, as frustrated as he was, Machado said he was having fun. He would repeatedly praise the overall play of the team.

“Even when you’re struggling,” he said this past weekend as he pondered this season and what has made it special for him, “everyone is pulling for you and everyone wants you to get out of it.”

Now, remember, he is (bleeping) Manny Machado. He knew he wouldn’t struggle forever.

He mostly knew.

“I knew it was gonna be there,” he said last Saturday as he sat in the visitors clubhouse at Tropicana Field. “I mean, that confidence is always there. That’s who I am. But we’re human. We go through our slumps and, you know, you’re like, ‘(Expletive)! I’m never gonna get a hit again. Do I suck?’ Like, yeah, it crosses everyone’s mind. If someone didn’t say that, then they might be lying.

“But it’s a long season, so you know where you’re going to be at the end of the year. And I think it makes it easier when your team is winning and you have guys having career years, you have rookies coming up and doing tremendous things. It makes baseball a little bit easier to come to a ballpark every single day. You don’t have to put that extra weight on your shoulders. Because it’s still there no matter what. But it’s just a little bit less pressure you put on yourself to try to come out of it.”

In the above-mentioned story, Machado does acknowledge, “For us to win, I gotta play at my caliber.”

It’s just what it is. For all those other players have done — and the collective contributions are the real story of this season — the Padres are not in playoff position without Machado.

As Machado goes, so go the Padres. That is something that has been true since his second season here, in  2020, when the talent around him was sufficient enough that his contributions actually mattered.

In the two seasons they have gone to the playoffs, he has finished third (2020) and second (2022) in National League MVP voting.

And, almost unfathomably after the worst first 2½ months of a season in his career, Machado could again finish top five in voting should he continue to produce as he has for nearly half the season.

You can read in my game story (here) about how Machado’s 42nd career multi-homer game — most in MLB since the start of the 2012 season — supported another fine effort by Michael King and lessened the sting of Merrill leaving the game after fouling a ball off his knee.

Merrill was diagnosed with a left patella bruise and X-rays were negative, meaning there was no bone fracture. It is likely he will miss some time, though how long is something the Padres will likely be better able to assess in the coming days.

Merrill continued his at-bat in the sixth inning and played center field in the seventh before being replaced there in the eighth inning by Tyler Wade.

The Padres could call up an outfielder, which would likely be Brandon Lockridge, who they got from the Yankees in exchange for Enyel De Los Santos at the trade deadline.

The King

King passed his career high in innings nine starts ago. His 28 starts this season are more than three times as many as he made last year, when he primarily worked out of the bullpen for the Yankees.

Yet he threw 100 pitches last night for the second start in a row, allowed one run in six innings and has now gone 11 starts without allowing more than three earned runs in a game. His 2.14 ERA (over 63 innings) during that stretch ranks fourth in the major leagues.

King (12-8, 3.10) is tied with Dylan Cease and five others for third in the National League in wins behind Zack Wheeler (14) and Chris Sale (16).

He did not allow a run last night until Michael Conforto homered on a sinker left a little too high and a little too in the middle of the plate leading off the sixth inning.

After a single by Matt Chapman followed, King got a visit from pitching coach Ruben Niebla.

“Ruben basically said empty the tank when he came out,” King recalled. “And so I think knowing that it was my last inning gave me, like, some extra energy or whatever I could put out there, and I was happy to get through it.”

With his 13th quality start, he reached 156⅔ innings on the season. That is 42 more than last season and just 4⅔ shy of the total he threw between three levels of the minor leagues in 2018.

The Padres and King insist he is going strong, and the results and accompanying metrics back up that contention. His velocity and the spin and movement on his pitches remain at (or better than) season norms.

The Padres did give King a few extra days between starts this turn through the rotation.

Consistent with his mindset all season, he shrugged at the mention of his reaching the 100-pitch mark in consecutive games for the first time in his career.

“I thought I was more efficient than that,” he said. “… I had eight days off. I felt good.”

Forcing the action

Maybe Machado’s first home run would have scored both runners anyway. Or maybe Giants rookie pitcher Mason Black was a little rattled and didn’t make the same quality and/or type of pitches he otherwise would have. We’ll never know, and it doesn’t matter.

Regardless, what Luis Arraez and Tatis did immediately before Machado’s first-inning homer was the latest example of the Padres forcing action on the bases.

On Profar’s fly ball to right-center field, Arraez tagged up from second and Tatis did so from first. Tatis briefly slowed about a third of the way to second to see where right fielder Mike Yastrzemski’s throw would go, and he immediately continued when he saw it would bounce wide of second.

Giants shortstop Tyler Fitzgerald judged erroneously that he could get Tatis, so the rookie moved to cut off the throw and fire to second base. His late throw got past second baseman Marco Luciano and rolled into right field and all the way past the foul line as both runners scored easily.

The play gave manager Mike Shildt cause to use one of his favorite expressions.

“It was aggressive with intelligence,” Shildt said. “The combinations — what we’re seeking and we get. I love the aggression. It was just a good baseball play. Luis sees it, takes off. And Tati did a nice job, because that’s a tough one, because you’ve got to read the throw. So he was in a good position to go, read it and then turned it on again to be able to force a play at second. So just another good baseball play.”

Getting there

The play showed something else as well.

“It is a sign I’m feeling good,” Tatis said with a smile.

Tatis estimated he is at about 95 percent in his return from a stress reaction in his right femur (thigh bone).

Where his not being at full strength/speed manifests most is when he is decelerating, be that in the field or on the bases. It clearly takes him more steps to stop.

“It’s a little bit of discomfort,” he said of the act of slowing down. “But it’s also more like muscle memory. But I feel good. I feel confident. I’m not afraid of running.”

That is apparent.

Tatis was 2-for-4 last night and has multiple hits in two of the four games since he returned from a 72-day absence.

Stepping up

Adrián Morejón and Jeremiah Estrada were for a night back in roles similar to those they were holding down before the Padres acquired Jason Adam and Tanner Scott at the trade deadline.

Morejón relieved Bryan Hoeing with one out in the eighth inning last night and retired the next two batters, and Estrada worked a 1-2-3 ninth.

The two young relievers (both 25) have been primarily working earlier innings the past five weeks. But they were needed to work late in last night’s game, because closer Robert Suarez was unavailable and Adam and Scott likely reserved only for emergency if the game had gone deep into extra innings due to recent workload.

“Really good bullpens have guys that bring it home, which we do (and) guys that, when we’re down, can hold it there and not have to use the same guys,” Shildt said. “And then the guys that typically bring it home that can be down, when you get into stretches where you’ve got a lot of close games, and they’re down, you have other guys that … step up and get it done. Sign of a really good team.”

Last night was the fifth consecutive game in which the Padres had a lead of three or fewer runs as late as the eighth inning. Saurez, Scott and Adam had all worked the previous four, which did have an off day in the middle.

Tidbits

• This is a preposterous disparity that really only a hitter who knows how to work a plate appearence could perpetrate: Profar is batting .167 3-for-18) with a .448 on-base percentage during a six-game on-base streak. He has walked 10 times in that span.
• Wade played his sixth position for the Padres last night, adding center field to the other two outfield spots plus shortstop, second and third. Said Wade: “I’m an athlete.” While he was standing ready as their emergency catcher, we will probably never get to see Wade there now that Elías Díaz has joined the team as the third catcher.
• Hoeing, who took over for King at the start of the seventh and got four outs, was pitching for the first time in eight days. Hoeing, who has a 1.04 ERA in 12 games (17⅓ innings) for the Padres, had pitched in seven games (8⅓ innings) from Aug. 18 to 29 and was deemed to need a rest.
• Xander Bogaerts was 1-for-4 with a double and has an extra-base hit in each of the past two games. He had one extra-base hit in his previous 14 games.
• As detailed in my game story, Machado’s two home runs last night tied him with Nate Colbert for most in Padres history with 163. You can read a story Jeff Sanders wrote (here) in 2020, in which Colbert talked about the record and who he thought would break it.
• The Padres’ 60-7 (.895) record when scoring at least five runs is best in the major leagues.
• The Padres’ three-run first inning was their 89th time scoring at least that many runs in an inning. That is four more times than they did so last season.
• Early in the season, the Padres were among the league leaders in scoring in the first inning. That ability waned over the summer. But they have scored 13 first-inning runs in the past 11 games. They had scored 13 first-inning runs in the 33 games before that.
• The Padres announced they will be providing sunscreen and a free bottle of water for all fans for tomorrow’s game. The forecast calls for temperatures in the 90s at game time.
• Machado revealed last night he has been playing most of the season with a finger injury. He did not specify what the injury is. He did chide me and MLB.com’s A.J. Cassavell for not reporting it while adding, “But I’m not going to tell you about it.” (Let me reiterate here that I enjoy the heck out of covering Machado. He can certainly be salty. But he makes me laugh a lot, and he has made the team I watch every day a lot better and a lot more relevant.)

All right, that’s it for me.

Talk to you tomorrow. Maybe. I have not seen my wife in two weeks, and I believe that after tonight our schedules do not have us both home again for another two weeks. So, yeah, we’ll see. Maybe the next newsletter will be Monday.

Either way, I will cover tonight’s game, and we will have our usual coverage on our Padres page.

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