Good morning from Boston,
There are moments that end up mattering.
Last night might have been such a moment for Fernando Tatis Jr. and, by extension, for the Padres.
You can read in my game story (here) about that moment and the others that led to the Padres’ 3-2 victory over the Red Sox.
The Padres may or may not be thisclose on offense. At times it appears they are. At others, it does not. Appearances aside, it is simply too early to know.
The passing of time is the only thing that will reveal the veracity of their contentions and what some of the underlying numbers suggest regarding the quality of their at-bats not being reflected in their production.
What we should be looking for at this early stage of the season are signs of what might be ahead.
And in last night’s ninth inning, in the midst of plenty of indications the Padres have problems, there was a moment that might have provided a sign that Tatis is still Tatis — and maybe even has grown into a more complete version of himself.
The Padres’ most dynamic player — the one on which they place so much of their hope — had struck out four times yesterday before walking to the plate to face Red Sox closer Aroldis Chapman with two outs and nobody on in the ninth inning of a tie game.
With fans standing up and cheering behind him and to his sides and out beyond the Green monster and Pesky’s Pole, Tatis fouled off a 99 mph sinker at the top of the zone. Chapman then bounced the next pitch, a splitter, halfway between the mound and the plate to even the count 2-2.
Then came another elevated 99 mph sinker, just a bit lower in the zone than the one he had fouled off, and Tatis did what he and other Padres batters have failed to do too often this season.
He did damage.
Tatis lined the pitch at 114 mph over the head of center fielder Ceddanne Rafaela, who helped out by taking a step in and to his right before turning back to give chase. The ball one-hopped the wall, and Tatis had a double.
“That’s the best part of baseball, right?” Tatis said after the game. “You just never know. That’s why there’s 27 outs to be played, and that’s why you just keep your (expletive) head in the game. … I always know I just need one swing to change the game. To put something in motion, it only takes one swing.”
It was Ramón Laureano’s swing that sent a too-high splitter into left-center field and drove in Tatis with what stood as the winning run.
But we cannot let the significance of Tatis setting aside four strikeouts to come through against one of the game’s most imposing closers.
The Padres and Tatis, now 27 years old, have been talking about his maturation process for a while. And there have certainly been signs of that in recent years.
But growing up isn’t so significant in the context of being a ballplayer if it isn’t accompanied by production.
Players like Tatis don’t get nine-figure contracts just because a team believes they are going to put up big numbers consistently. They get paid to come up big in big moments.
And the man who frequently made big moments submit to his will early in his career and again for parts of 2024 (including that postseason) had been a non-factor in more of those moments of late.
In his first five seasons, he hit .305 with a .910 OPS in 343 plate appearances in high-leverage situations. But in the 91 high-leverage plate appearances from the start of last season up until the end of yesterday’s game, he hit .261 with an .863 OPS.
Those are not terrible numbers. But they are not statue contract numbers.
Plus, Tatis walked to the plate in the ninth inning batting .172 (5-for-29) this season. That included his being 0-for-10 against left-handers, of which Chapman is one.
“Don’t give up,” Tatis said. “Stay locked in. It’s baseball. You never know what this rollercoaster is going to bring. That’s why you keep your head in the game.”
Sure. But anyone who has watched Tatis knows that has not always been how he reacts to bad results early in games.
Last night, he played the kind of game that made four strikeouts a footnote instead of the headline.
Before the hit in the ninth, Tatis took away an extra-base hit by getting a fantastic jump and running 90 feet to chase down a 104 mph line drive to the gap in right-center field for the second out of the sixth inning.
“I had to learn how to mature, how to stay in the game, stay locked in, play defense, change the game playing defense,” Tatis said. “You’ve just got to stay in the game not just for yourself but for the rest of the team that is out there competing.”
Padres manager Craig Stammen, who made it a priority to build up Tatis pretty much from the moment he took the job,noted the significance.
“He’s engaged in the game, and he knows that he can impact the game in many different ways,” Stammen said. “And he’s not taking his at-bats out to right field. He’s still locked in, and knows that he can make a game saving play, you know, anywhere he is on the field. And that was what we kind of saw. That catch he made in right center is pretty amazing.
Manny takes & Manny’s take
Manny Machado was 0-for-1 in yesterday’s game and also lost one of his two hits from Wednesday due to a scoring change by MLB.
He is batting .174 (4-for-23). That is in part because he has swung and missed on an abundance of pitches he should have hit. Like arguably 10 or so already.
But Machado has a .406 on-base percentage because he is not swinging at pitches he should not be swinging at.
He is chasing a mere 23.3% of the pitches he has seen outside the zone. And that includes one game in which he chased eight of 16. Outside that game, he has a 16.9% chase rate.
Last night, he swung at one of 18 pitches out of the zone and walked three times, bringing his season total to nine.
“I’m trying to get pitches to hit,” he said. “When I do, I’m missing them. So I’ve got to be better at not missing them.”
In addition to some of the other underlying numbers talked about in my game story from Friday and in yesterday’s newsletter, Machado is another piece of evidence for the Padres that their approach at the plate is generally good despite their ranking last in the major leagues in average (.190), and OPS (.554) and being tied for last in runs scored (24).
“Manny has been doing a great job controlling the zone, not swinging at, you know, stuff way off the plate, taking great at-bats,” Stammen said. “Those walks are big. Him pushing the pitch limit up of the pitcher. He naturally is going to garner the pitchers to be careful with him. And now he’s using that to his advantage.”
Asked about the offense as a whole last night, after the Padres were held to three or fewer runs for the seventh time in eight games, this is what Machado said:
“I think overall, you’ve got to look at the bright side of things, not just all the negatives,” he said. “Looking from inside the dugout, I think we’re taking really good at-bats. Can we be better? Absolutely. I think we could take advantage of runners in scoring position like we didn’t today. We could have kind of not been so close if we would have scored on some of those opportunities. Absolutely. But we’re taking really good at-bats. We’re swinging at pitches that we need to be swinging at. We’re hitting it hard right at people, but we’re taking really good quality at-bats. And I think that’s a positive.
“I’m not taking away from the fact that we’re not scoring runs and taking those opportunities with runners in scoring position that we should be driving in. No excuse for that. But I think we’re taking good at-bats. We just got to keep doing that. I think over a long period of a year, if you do that, I think there will be more better than not.”
Taken away
The scoring change was on the groundball Machado hit to San Francisco Giants third baseman Matt Chapman in Wednesday’s first inning that ended up scoring Jackson Merrill after first baseman Casey Schmitt failed to catch Chapman’s wayward throw.
You can see video of that play embedded in Thursday’s newsletter (here).
Didn’t seem it would line up
Last night’s victory might go down as one of the most unlikely in Padres history.
At least it should, based on the social media reaction when the lineup was posted in the afternoon. There was, according to a sampling of the feedback I saw, simply no way the Padres were going to win with Jackson Merrill on the bench and Miguel Andujar batting third and Ty France in the lineup playing first base instead of Nick Castellanos.
Jeff Sanders’ pregame story (here) explained Stammen was not only stacking his batting order with right-handed hitters against left-handed starter Connelly Early but using an early season game to see what France, Andujar and Bryce Johnson could do in the situations they were put in.
“You want to keep your guys feeling like they’re part of the team, because they are a big part of the team,” Stammen said Saturday afternoon. “And, you know, find opportunities for them to get playing time, especially early in the season. You know, we’re trying to figure out how to use the roster the right way and who can play when and all that kind of stuff. So trying different matchups early is kind of how it is.
“It’s not quite like college football, where if you lose the first game you’re out. I’m a Notre Dame fan. They lost the first two games, they’re out of the College Football Playoff after two weeks. The Major League Baseball season affords you a little bit of time to mix and match the lineups and figure out what’s best for your team.”
One feature of yesterday’s lineup could become a fixture.
Laureano batted second for the first time this season. He went 1-for-4 with a walk and is hitting .308 (8-for-26) with a double and two homers on the season.
“I think Laureano has (had) probably (the) best results and best at-bats that we’ve gotten so far,” Stammen said. “So probably see him more at the top of the lineup going forward.”
Changing it up
Before last night, Mason Miller had thrown 41 changeups since becoming a full-time relief pitcher in 2024. That accounted for 2% of his 2,033 pitches in that span.
He threw his changeup twice in a row last night to finish off a three-pitch strikeout of Masataka Yoshida for the second out of the ninth inning.
It is not a bad pitch. He gets a strike with it more often than not (19 swinging, four called and six fouls). Opponents are 1-for-7 in at-bats that end on the pitch.
It is merely extraneous given a fastball that averages 101 mph and a slider that is arguably his best pitch. But Miller likes to tinker with the changeup each spring and in bullpen sessions, and he breaks it out from time to time when he thinks it is prudent.
“A one-run game, my four-seam (fastball) is probably my most confident pitch, but it’s also the pitch that can give up the most damage,” Miller said. “Yoshida last year had a single on the slider. Hitters, if they have success with something, sometimes they’ll look for that again. So I threw (the changeup) 0-1 just to see where he was at with it. Got a really early swing and some contact. I was like, ‘I’m gonna just throw one a little further and see what happens.’ He still has to respect a fastball over the outer edge.”
The middle pitch of the three shown here is what happened:
Good morning
Good afternoon
Goodnight
Mason Miller strikes out the side with some nasty stuff 😳 pic.twitter.com/kDJidu1IdJ
— MLB (@MLB) April 4, 2026
Sanders wrote more about Miller’s use of the changeup in his postgame notebook (here). Also in that story, Jeff wrote about France’s hard-hit balls on a night he was feeling the cold and Andujar’s three-hit game.
Rough start
As discussed in my game story, the ninth-inning heroics by Tatis and Laureano were necessary because the Padres’ best relief pitcher from a year ago is not getting outs as easily so far this season.
Adrian Morejón, who had an historic level of success stranding runners in 2025, has allowed an inherited runner to score or allowed a run in each of his three appearances.
Two singles and a defensive miscue yesterday led to his losing a one-run lead for the second time this season.
Morejón surrendered three of the 26 one-run leads or ties he was asked to protect before the All-Star break last season and one of the 12 he inherited after the break.
Quality Vásquez
Left-hander Kyle Hart was warming up and likely was about to enter the game to face left-hander Jarren Duran if Willson Contreras had reached base with one out in the sixth inning.
But that was who Tatis robbed with his running catch, and Vásquez got Wilyer Abreu to ground out to end the inning, completing a night in which he held on for dear life en route to his second quality start.
Sanders wrote (here) about Vásquez’s outing and how he is earning Stammen’s trust.
Tidbits
Miller has not allowed a run in his past 24⅔ innings, a streak that dates to Aug. 6 and is the longest active scoreless streak in the majors.
Jeremiah Estrada worked his third consecutive scoreless inning and has his ERA down to 9.82 after being charged with four runs in two-thirds of an inning in his season debut.
Tom Krasovic wrote (here) yesterday about Matt Waldron appearing on track to join the Padres sooner than later after his two scoreless outings in Triple-A.
Laureano has reached base in six of the seven games he has played. Machado is the only Padres player to have reached base in seven (of eight) games.
The Padres yesterday wore their beautiful brown tops, which they don’t do very often. Most Padres starting pitchers have over the past six seasons preferred the pinstripe road jerseys. But Vásquez (like Yu Darvish) has exquisite taste. We will see what Walker Buehler chooses today.
All right, that’s it for me.
Early game today (10:35 a.m. PT). Maybe. It is supposed to begin raining around that time and not stop until evening. So we could be hanging around Fenway Park for a while.
Anyway, talk to you tomorrow.