Padres Daily: So much relief; quite a run; uplifting Peralta

Good morning,

Tanner Scott is the latest face of the Padres remarkable season.

If there is a theme for a team that was thought to have been built around stars, it is that there is no one face of this franchise in 2024. At least not on the field. Not where it matters.

This is actually a team. That is what has struck many observers around the league. It is, in the opinion of several of those people, the most complete roster A.J. Preller has ever put together.

Should last year’s incomplete, top-heavy Padres team have made the playoffs? Undoubtedly, yes. This is not an either/or topic.

But this year’s group has talent and complementary pieces. It has a bunch of guys willing to do whatever they are asked.

And Scott, one of three relievers Preller acquired at the trade deadline, fits right in.

“I like pitching,” he said last night. “It’s my job.”

That is pretty much what Robert Suarez says about all the times he has gone four outs or protected four-run leads.

They are essentially the same guy, throwing from opposite sides. Give them the ball. Whenever.

And the Padres have them both.

“It’s nice having those two guys back there,” Manny Machado said of the two All-Star closers.

Yeah. They have needed them.

The Padres last night got what has, of late, been a rare quality start, got some gifts from the Pirates and then turned the game over to Jason Adam, Scott and Suarez.

You can read Jeff Sanders’ game story (here) about Michael King’s six innings, the way the Padres got their runs and how those relievers worked the final three innings in a 3-0 victory over the reeling Pirates.

“We’ve got the horses down there,” King said of the bullpen.

Indeed. And because of a convergence of events, they are having to ride them.

In this run of eight games in eight days, the Padres have won seven times.

The first of those games featured a rain delay that forced the bullpen to cover eight innings. Five of the next six games were decided by one run, with the only one that wasn’t getting decided in 10 innings. (That was one of three times the Padres played an extra inning in a four-day span.)

Last night’s three-run margin was secured with a run in the eighth inning.

Each of the past seven games have been within one run or tied at some point after the seventh inning.

Mike Shildt has essentially had no choice but to go with his top arms late in games. And he has had to navigate the past two nights without Adrián Morejón, who has the flu.

So Scott has worked six of the past eight days, and Suarez has worked five of the past seven.

Shildt, whose main purpose is to “normalize” every circumstance so that his players see solutions in place of obstacles, suggested this is no big thing.

“It’s really no different than we’ve done with anybody all year,” he said.

Actually, no Padres reliever had been used five times in seven days or six times in eight days this season.

That does not make it wrong or untenable.

On the contrary, as has been stated in this space before, Shildt has been delivering a master class in bullpen management all season.

And he is pulling the right strings now.

He also has the right strings to pull.

I asked a poorly worded question after last night’s game regarding how it would be good to have a five-run lead instead of playing all these close games.

“Of course it would help,” Shildt said.

My point was — and a better phrasing of the question would have been — about how much better it would be if Shildt could give his high-leverage relievers a break.

Because this is unsustainable.

And Shildt acknowledged as much, even as he pushed back on the idea that there is any “concern” over how the team’s top relievers have had to be relied on so heavily.

“We like to have leads and have our guys pitch at the end,” he said. “So that part’s great, you know, but clearly they (can’t) pitch every night.”

Getting it done

The Padres have won 18 times in a 21-game span for the first time in team history.

There are a lot of reasons for this run of success.

One of them:

“Luck,” Xander Bogaerts said.

Sure.

That is what it takes to do something that, in an average season, is accomplished by just two or three teams.

As noted in yesterday’s newsletter, the Padres have done to the Pirates and Marlins over the past week what good teams often do to bad teams. They have taken advantage of miscues.

In every one of the Padres’ five victories, there was at least one crucial mistake by the Pirates.

On Monday, the Padres were helped to one of their two runs by a wild pitch and the other by an error. Last night, two of the Padres’ three runs were a direct result of errors.

It also requires playing some excellent baseball to win this much over a stretch of longer than three weeks.

The Padres have in this span generally played solid defense, gotten the aforementioned bullpen contributions and had just enough timely hits.

“It takes some special moments,” said Bogaerts, who was part of two World Series teams in Boston, including the 2018 team that had its own 18-3 stretch. “You have to have some Jackson Merrill home run-type stretches. … Solid pitching.”

You don’t throw wins out the window.

Not in the big leagues.

And the Padres were due some of the breaks they are getting now. They weren’t getting many in the season’s first couple months and didn’t get many throughout 2023.

“That’s baseball,” Machado said. “That’s why you play 162 games. And I always say, ‘It’s the beauty of playing a full season.’ There’s a lot of ups and downs and a lot of baseball gods to be dealt with. There’s good luck, there’s bad luck. So you take it as they come.”

Division math

The three best records since the All-Star break belong to teams  in the National League West — the Padres (18-4), Diamondbacks (19-5) and Dodgers (15-8).

The Giants are 14-11, which is ninth best in MLB since the break.

Here are the NL wild-card standings:

Hitting the right notes

David Peralta is an unintentional life coach.

Speaking to him is like a hug wrapped in a smile lathered with a pep talk.

And it has nothing to do with his home run last night giving him four homers in his past 56 plate appearances or that he has nine hits (including three doubles and two homers) in his past 21 at-bats.

I wrote (here) about Peralta’s perspective back in June when he was batting .207 with a .544 OPS and acting outwardly in just about every way as if he could not be more pleased.

“Baseball is a kid’s game,” he said then. “And I play it and enjoy it as a kid. There is one thing that I’ve learned over and over in the years in baseball — today that you are here but you don’t know where you’re gonna be tomorrow.”

The 36-year-old Peralta knew back then he needed to hit or he might not have much time left with the Padres. He has been in the game a long time, been released, changed positions, worked his way through the fringes of the minor leagues, worked at McDonald’s to literally be able to afford to get himself from one league to another, played 11 big-league seasons, gone back to the minors …

He is not naive. He was asked the other day how much awareness he had that his time could be running short had he not started producing back in early July.

“You think about it every day,” Peralta said. “But I always think about how I can help the team to win. Baseball is a hard game. And I can’t put more stress on myself like, ‘I gotta hit , I gotta hit.’ If I start putting a lot of stress on myself, it’s not going to happen. I know what I have to do. I’ve got to keep working.

“You’ve got to keep the same attitude. I know it’s going to come. You’ve got to trust what you’re doing. I’ve got a great coaching staff, I’ve got great teammates. They support me the same way I support them. It’s a matter of time. It’s going to happen.”

While starting virtually every game in right field against opposing right-handers, Peralta has batted .299/.337/.529 in 28 games since July 3.

“Every time I step up to home plate I am always expecting something good is going to happen,” Peralta said. “Even if it doesn’t happen, turn the page. Next at-bat something good is going to happen. I’m going to keep doing it until something good happens.”

This is, by the way, whose locker is next to Merrill’s in the Padres clubhouse at Petco Park. It has been difficult to keep track of the phrases Peralta has said that the 21-year-old Merrill also says.

Hits keep coming

A Luis Ortiz slider broke down and in and hit Jurickson Profar just above the right ankle in the first inning last night.

It was the seventh time in eight games Profar was hit by a pitch, tying a major league record shared by three others.

While it doesn’t make the bruises go away, there is some solace.

Profar contributed to the Padres loading the bases and eventually scoring a run without getting a hit in last night’s first inning. And the Padres have scored in all but one of the innings in which he has been hit in this painful stretch.

My bad(s)

I wrote in a “tidbit” in yesterday’s newsletter that Ha-Seong Kim stole his league-leading 22nd base on Monday. Not the case. That should have said team leading.

Worse, I wrote an item yesterday on Martín Pérez and said he was starting last night. He was not. Ryan Finley and I even discussed that on our podcast Monday afternoon, and I still messed it up. Anyway, read the item again today, because Pérez is starting today.

I wasn’t going to mention how my day began at 4 a.m. ET on Monday in Miami and ended about 3 a.m. PT on Tuesday. But now I will, since I am so embarrassed by those gaffes (especially the Pérez one) that I need to offer an excuse.

Tidbits

• A win today would make the Padres 6-0 against the Pirates this season. They also won all six games against the Nationals this year. No Padres team has ever swept two season series of at least six games.
• The Padres have won eight straight series for the first time since 2007 and are 15 games above .500 for the first time since the end of 2022.
• Machado drove in two runs last night. The Padres are 19-0 when he drives in at least that many.
• Luis Arraez was 2-for-3 last night, raising his NL-leading average to .306. He also walked, his first time doing so in 12 games (80 plate appearances). Arraez’s 2.8 percent walk rate is the lowest of his career, as is his .338 on-base percentage.
• This is a nice thing:

All right, that’s it for me. Early game today (1:10 p.m. PT).

Talk to you tomorrow.

Originally Published: August 14, 2024 at 6:30 a.m.