NEW YORK — There is the aggressive manner in which Mike Shildt manages from the first game of the season and all through the summer.
And then there is what he did the past two days at Citi Field.
Shildt and the Padres grabbed a victory the first time.
The game slipped away the second time, as Shildt identified a potential turning point in the game and tried to make sure it didn’t turn.
It turned anyway. Quickly. Drastically.
Shildt removed starting pitcher Randy Vásquez in the third inning with the Padres trailing by a run and Vásquez having thrown a total of 48 pitches in the game.
The Padres manager had the next 20 outs mapped out. But none of those plans would matter, as Brandon Nimmo greeted reliever Wandy Peralta by drilling a three-run homer from which the Padres never recovered in what became a 6-1 loss to the Mets.
“It wasn’t actually overly complicated for me,” Shildt said. “Didn’t work out as planned.”
The Mets, who took two of three in the series here this week, hold the sixth and final National League playoff spot. They trail the Padres by four games and have a two-game lead over the Diamondbacks, Giants and Reds.
The Padres are a virtual lock to secure a playoff berth with nine games remaining in the regular season. But Shildt’s calendar had clearly shifted to October, at least for a time.
That was something he signalled Wednesday night when he removed his best starter, Nick Pivetta, with a three-run lead and one batter on and two down in the fifth inning.
The Padres’ four highest-leverage relievers combined to cover the final 4⅓ innings of that 7-4 victory.
Thursday, Shildt was trying to make sure a game did not get away.
The Mets had scored a run in the inning on two singles and a groundout to go ahead 2-1. And Vásquez walked Pete Alonso immediately before Shildt emerged from the dugout to insert Peralta, a lefty, to face the left-handed-hitting Nimmo.
“It’s a lineup more conducive to lefties,” Shildt said. “We trust Randy. We’re in the third. We’ve already hit in the third, obviously. We’re down 2-1. We’ve (runners on) got first and third. And there’s always that spot. There are multiple spots in the game that you want to make sure you keep it where it is. We know that they’ve got their back-end (bullpen) guys fully rested. We know their starter is going to be on a shorter leash. At that point, it’s about the best matchup to get out of the inning with keeping it where it’s at.”
Peralta induces groundballs at a higher rate (61%) than all but six other qualifying relievers. Nimmo’s 45% groundball rate is in the top quartile among major league hitters.
“Clearly, the worst-case scenario is what happened,” Shildt said. “But going out, I’m thinking, ‘OK, just hit it at somebody.’ … At at that moment it’s like, ‘What’s the best chance to get out of this with no damage and what’s the best chance to get us limited damage?’ And we got a super-high, I mean just a really good, jumps off the page match-up for a groundball, and he got a swing and put it out of the ballpark. Give him credit.”
There was something else on Shildt’s mind, as well, that contributed to his maneuver.
The Padres began the day two games behind the National League West-leading Dodgers, and the reward for winning the division is a home wild-card series as opposed to the road series the Padres are presently in line to play.
“That’s a little bit of the component as far as the going for it part,” Shildt said. “We’re looking to win our division, and we know we’re down in the division.”
It was a shock to Vásquez.
“I didn’t really expect to go just three innings today,” he said. “I really wanted to take care of the bullpen as much as possible. I wanted to go longer than I did. But, you know, that’s just a decision by the manager, and that’s how long he allowed me to go out there.”
Not that Thursday was entirely out of the ordinary.
Shildt is as proactive (and arguably as adept) as any manager in the game at employing his relievers to navigate victories. He has had his bullpen work the bulk of numerous games this season when other managers might have stuck — for better or worse — with a starter at least a little longer.
On this day, though, he was hoping to get 6⅔ innings from his relievers. That would have been seven more than he asked of them Wednesday. He was willing to have to figure out how to get through Friday and beyond if it meant a chance at victory on Thursday.
That ended up not being an issue, as middle relievers filled out the duration of Thursday’s game and the Padres got just two men on base over the final six innings.
They did not do all that much offensively early, either.
The Mets took a 1-0 lead on a home run by Alonso in the first, because of course they did. Alonso homered in every game in the series, and the Mets drove in 13 of their 18 runs with 10 home runs.
The Padres tied the game in the third inning the way they score a lot of their runs in 2025.
Tatis reached on a one-out single, went to second on an errant pick-off throw by Mets rookie starter Jonah Tong and to third on a wild pitch before sprinting home on Arraez’s shallow fly ball to left.
Tatis’ single ended up being the last hit against Tong, who was lifted after five innings. Four relievers continued that domination for another seven batters. Infield singles by Jake Cronenworth and Tatis in the eighth inning, both of which caromed off pitcher Gregory Soto, broke up the offensive languor but did not result in the game being any closer.
The Padres boarded a plane for Chicago early Wednesday evening. A three-game series against the White Sox, who have the second-worst record in the major leagues, begins Friday. Victories in the first two games at Rate Field, combined with a pair of losses by both the Reds and Diamondbacks and one loss by the Giants, would clinch a playoff spot by Saturday night.
Originally Published: September 18, 2025 at 12:57 PM PDT