Good morning from Anaheim,

The biggest news of the day came early yesterday morning.

The Padres sale is all but complete, and it is going to be record shattering.

You can read my story (here) on the pending sale to a group led by private equity billionaire Jose E. Feliciano and his wife Kwanza Jones.

The thing Padres fans should be excited about is the prospect of more available capital — as in the new ownership group has far more money to spend than the current group or, really, any previous Padres owner.

If the new owners can come close to matching Peter Seidler’s vision while possessing more of an ability to sustainably spend on players, this could be the best thing to happen to the Padres.

There is no way to know if that will happen. But it makes sense that it will.

Some Padres players expressed the belief that the change of ownership will be beneficial for the organization, and they spoke to what it means to them and to baseball that the Padres are selling for a valuation of $3.9 billion. Those thoughts are in a story (here) I posted yesterday.

As I have written about and talked about before, there has been an expectation internally that whoever the new owners were would give Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller the financial backing he needs as he shops to improve the team in the coming months.

Speaking of which …

One of those needs is expected to be starting pitching.

We can’t overreact to every bad start, even though it is tempting because of the uncertainty regarding the rotation.

But last night was not a great outing for Matt Waldron, who was charged with six runs in 3⅔ innings in his season debut.

You can read about Waldron’s night and the demise of the Padres’ eight-game winning streak in my game story (here) from the 8-0 loss to the Angels.

Much has been made of Waldron having evolved from being a knuckleballer to a pitcher who throws a knuckleball.

But last night, he still threw his unique offering 38% of the time, pretty much exactly how often he threw it in 2024.

He used his newly juiced fastballs — a four-seamer and sinker that are both up about 2 mph from his ‘24 averages to 92.5 mph and 91.9 mph, respectively — a combined 44% of the time.

How much he throws which pitches might not be so important as how often he is leaving fastballs in the heart of the strike zone, as he did on three key hits last night.

“I gotta hit spots,” he said. “My strength is fastball command. And when that’s leaking a little bit, that’s a problem.”

After something of a breakout season in 2024, during which Waldron had a 14-game span in which he ranked 13th in MLB with a 2.76 ERA, he made one start for the Padres and 18 starts in Triple-A last season.

Since that run in mid-’24, Waldron has allowed at least four runs in six of his seven big-league starts and has a 10.58 ERA over 32⅓ innings.

Against the best

My game story also focused on the Padres continuing to see excellent starting pitchers and not doing great against them.

Last night, it was José Soriano, who lowered his MLB-best ERA to 0.28 with 5⅔ scoreless innings.

The Padres’ only victory was that they ran up the pitch count against Soriano, who fell one out shy of becoming the 11th pitcher to turn in a quality start against the Padres through their first 20 games.

It was the first time in five starts this season Soriano failed to make it through six innings. Still, he became the first pitcher since at least 1900 to go 5-0 over any five-start span while allowing no more than one run and no more than 12 hits.

The Padres got just two singles against him, but they worked four walks and ran up his pitch count.

“The competing that we are showing in the box is pretty good,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said. “That’ll only benefit us going forward the rest of the year.”

What they did to get Soriano out of the game is what they have done to a few of the better pitchers they have faced this season.

And they have faced more than a few.

Of the 39 qualifying starting pitchers with an ERA below 3.00 as of this morning, six have faced the Padres this season. Four of those pitchers threw quality starts. Together, they have posted a 2.07 ERA against the Padres. (The number was seven before Brandon Webb allowed four runs in six innings yesterday. The number also does not include reigning National League Cy Young winner Paul Skenes, who has allowed just three runs in 17⅓ innings over his past three starts after having a rough season opener.)

“If we want to be the best, we’ve got to figure out a way to beat the best,” Stammen said. “When we get to a place where we want to be, what we’re playing this season for, we’re going to face a lot of pitchers like that. So hopefully this is part of the learning curve, and us facing these guys builds perseverance and determination and drive and gives us a better opportunity to tackle these guys when we get the chance when it really means something.”

Yes, the Padres’ struggles against good pitchers would be more troubling if October was just around the corner.

And it would be more troubling if the Padres had not managed to win three of those games (and 13 games overall).

“Every (starter) from Seattle is f—g great,” Xander Bogaerts said, referring to the fact the Padres just completed a sweep of the Mariners. “Just because we lost to these guys’ ace; Seattle had three aces.”

Tidbits

Freddy Fermin was initially slated to catch Waldron, but the Padres decided to give him one more day of rest. Fermin, who has been rattled by at least a half-dozen hard fouls off his facemask this season and was pulled after the most recent of those in Wednesday’s game, is expected to start behind the plate tonight.
Gavin Sheets’ double in the ninth inning was his ninth of the season, one off the major league lead. He has four doubles in the past three games.
Ty France has started four of the past five games at first base, and he has hit safely in all of those. Ostensibly the last man to make the opening-day roster after signing a minor-league deal at the start of spring training, France is batting .280/.333./.440 in 27 plate appearances.
Manny Machado was 1-for-4 last night. He has been on base at least once in 17 of his 19 games and is batting .210/.363/.339 on the season.
Luis Campusano was 0-for-1, which ended his hitting streak at eight games. But he walked twice and is still working a career-high nine-game on-base streak.
The Padres entered last night’s game with the second-highest hard-hit rate (45.8%) in the majors. Their six hard hits last night were their second-fewest in a game this season.
Josh Lowe’s home run in the fifth inning was the first homer surrendered by David Morgan in 18⅔ innings dating to last season. That also accounted for the first two earned runs he has allowed in eight appearances (11 innings) this season.
Wandy Peralta worked 1⅔ scoreless innings. After surrendering two runs and and allowing all five runners he inherited to score over his first five appearances (four innings), Peralta has turned in six scoreless innings over his past five outings.
Alek Jacob, who in his only appearance of the season got the win with his two scoreless innings at the end of Wednesday’s 7-6 victory over the Mariners, was optioned yesterday to make room for Waldron.
The Padres are two games worse than they were through 20 games last season. Their 13-7 record is tied for the fifth best 20-game start in team history. They ended up making the playoffs both the previous years they began 13-7 (1996 and 2022).

All right, that’s it for me.

I finished yesterday’s newsletter about three hours before news of the pending sale broke. It’s time for some sleep.

Talk to you tomorrow.