PHOENIX — The Dodgers seemed to marvel a little bit at how Mike Shildt managed Wednesday’s game.
“Bringing in a guy to get a big out with Shohei,” Dodgers left fielder Michael Conforto said. “Yeah, it can feel a little bit more like playoffs.”
He referred to Shildt replacing starting pitcher Randy Vásquez with left-hander Adrián Morejón to face Dodgers lead-off hitter Shohei Ohtani in the fifth inning.
“The way you saw Mike manage, with some urgency and the moves,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said, “I wouldn’t say playoff game, but it was intense.”
Yes, Vásquez had thrown just 70 pitches and allowed one run. And it is not even the middle of June.
Yet Shildt had a relatively rested back end of his bullpen and an off day coming up. Ohtani, one of the two best hitters on earth, was coming up a third time in a tie game. Vásquez has allowed a .217 average and .677 OPS the first two times through the batting order and a .361 average and .961 OPS the third time through.
So Shildt decided to do what he has done fairly often and usually so adeptly this season. He chased a victory by attempting to make the pieces of a pitching puzzle fit.
It didn’t work out. And it was the latest sign that something needs to change for the Padres.
Relievers are not computer programs. They are human.
Morejón made every pitch he needed to but muffed a grounder. Jeremiah Estrada allowed his first home run in a month.
So Wednesday’s failure probably does not entirely correlate to both Morejón and Estrada pitching for the fourth time in six days, twice in a tie game and twice protecting a one-run lead. It can’t be entirely blamed on Estrada having pitched in the second-most games in the majors this season or that Morejón is one of the Padres’ MLB-leading six relief pitchers to have made at least 29 appearances this season.
But Monday was the 12th time in the past 24 games the Padres’ bullpen has lost a lead or let an opponent untie a game. That is after the team’s relievers began the season protecting the first 22 leads with which they were entrusted.
When considering what has happened — and worrying about what might happen — a remarkable convergence of events cannot be dismissed.
While playing 22 of the 23 days leading up to Thursday’s off-day, the bullpen posted a 2.69 ERA (eighth best in MLB) while working 83⅔ innings (seventh).
That workload alone is not the story.
Padres relievers made 82 appearances in that span. An astonishing 71 times, a reliever entered a game with the game tied or the Padres leading or trailing by no more than two runs.
Friday is the start of a run of 13 games in a row and 29 games in the next 31 days.
The Padres have played 37 games that have been decided by no more than two runs, fourth most in MLB. Of those, 16 have come in the past 20 games. Before beating the Dodgers 11-1 on Tuesday and losing 5-2 on Wednesday, the Padres had played nine games in a row at the start of June decided by one or two runs.
The bullpen cannot continue being pushed like this.
It was just in 2021 that something similar unfolded, and a bullpen that had to pick up for a starting rotation decimated by injuries eventually sputtered. The Padres imploded in multiple areas that season, falling from 17 games over .500 in early August to a 79-83 finish. But the chief reason was the attrition in the rotation and ensuing workload that led to the bullpen with MLB’s best ERA (2.84) on July 6 to have its seventh-worst ERA (4.50) the rest of the way.
Several people in the organization have privately acknowledged the emerging crisis with the pitching staff, though no one will say it for publication.
However, Shildt did say something this week that was significant, in that he almost never says anything like it.
The manager rarely comes close to calling out his players. He frequently denies commenting even on obvious events if doing so could be construed as a disparaging comment. But after Nick Pivetta threw 93 pitches in four innings Monday, Shildt said it like it was.
“A lot of guys are carrying the mail,” he said of the bullpen. “We’re pushing, piecing it together and competing at the same time. But, you know, we’re going to need some depth out of some starters.”
This was not a swipe at Pivetta. In fact, Pivetta has been the Padres’ most effective and most durable starter.
The rotation as a whole, however, has gone through stretches in which it is burdening the bullpen far too much.
In the season’s first 13 games, the Padres got six or more innings from a starting pitcher just three times and fewer than five innings five times.
And in the past 15 games, starters have gone six innings just three times and fewer than five innings six times.
That is not the only thing threatening to crush the bullpen. The Padres’ offense — with or without the additional bat it desperately needs — can help out a little more.
The Padres have scored more than three runs in just nine of their past 25 games.
The reality is the Padres need the offense to more consistently do its share of the work. They probably also need to add a starter and/or a higher-leverage reliever.
Or Shildt is going to have to start letting Vásquez pitch on in situations like Wednesday. He will have to push young starters Ryan Bergert and Stephen Kolek. He will have to test the limits of what some of his relievers can do.
And those sorts of compromises usually do not end well.
The Padres have done some remarkable maneuvering to win as many games as they have.
One of their three top starting pitchers — Yu Darvish — has yet to make his season debut while he works back from an elbow injury. Another, Michael King, has been out the past three weeks with a shoulder malady. The other, Dylan Cease, has made every start, but the majority of them have not been altogether good.
Their best starter this season, Pivetta, is better than he has ever been — which is either great or concerning. The three young pitchers they are now running out every five days have been better than could have been expected, which is either great or concerning.
The Padres are nine games over .500 and in playoff position.
But with 95 games remaining, their season hinges on a disconcerting number of maybes.
Maybe Cease has found that rhythm he needs and is going to maintain it most of his remaining 18 or 19 starts.
Maybe Pivetta can keep turning in quality starts more often than not.
Maybe Kolek and Bergert will continue to keep even the low-scoring Padres in games as they navigate their first seasons as major league starting pitchers.
Maybe Vásquez can keep stranding the legion of runners that reach base against him in many of his starts.
Maybe the Padres bullpen can withstand the stress of working multiple higher-leverage innings and Shildt and pitching coach Ruben Niebla can continue to pull almost every correct lever almost every game for the next 3½ months.
Maybe Darvish will return before the All-Star break and King shortly after, and maybe both will remain healthy and pitch brilliantly.
Maybe Matt Waldron comes up and trusts his knuckleball. Maybe reliever Bryan Hoeing comes off his rehab assignment and picks up where he left off before his shoulder injury.
Maybe 34-year-old catcher Elias Diaz and 38-year-old catcher Martin Maldonado will remain healthy and able to catch upwards of three games a week and continue to serve as the pitching staff’s sherpas all through the summer and into the fall.
Maybe all or most of those things will happen.
Because if not, the Padres are almost certainly in trouble.
That the team’s left fielders are batting .201 with a .541 OPS, third worst among any of the 30 teams’ left field groups, is a problem. The Padres have been shopping for help there for more than a month.
That the Padres’ lead-off batter is hitting .188 since May 3 and the No. 2 batter is hitting .216 since May 23 and the No.4 batter is hitting .210 since May 13 is a collective albatross for the offense.
But the gray clouds darkening the skies ahead have accumulated not because of what the Padres are doing or not doing on offense.
It is on this mountain of maybes that the Padres could wash out.
“We’ve done the best we can to put the guys in the right spots,” Shildt said. “And for the most part, we’ve been rewarded for that. … We’re getting contributions from everybody who is giving us what they have. That’s all you can ask.”
Actually, they’re going to have to get more.
