Good morning,
Manny Machado is batting .186 with a .630 OPS.
Jackson Merrill is batting .231 with a .667 OPS.
Fernando Tatis Jr. has 10 hits in his past 26 at-bats but is still batting just .253 and has yet to hit his first home run of 2026.
Yet the Padres have won 10 of their past 11 games, 13 of their past 15 and are tied with the Braves for the second-best record in the major leagues at 15-7, a half-game behind the Dodgers.
“We’re playing good ball, and we’re not even on fire as a team offensively,” Machado said yesterday afternoon. “We can just imagine what we’re gonna do when we’re all rolling.”
My game story (here) from yesterday’s 2-1 victory over the Angels focused on the contributions of fourth outfielder Bryce Johnson (who drove in the deciding run) and 22-year-old reliever Bradgley Rodriguez (who got five high-leverage outs because Jason Adam and Adrian Morejón were unavailable).
I gave short shrift in that story to Xander Bogaerts, who drove in the game’s first run and made a play in the sixth inning that kept Mike Trout from a leadoff single. That was significant since two Angels ended up walking in the inning before Ron Marinaccio got Jo Adell to hit a pop fly for the third out.
Great job by Bogey and Sheets to get Trout at 1B! pic.twitter.com/IYRanxMBfh
— Talking Friars (@TalkingFriars) April 19, 2026
The Padres’ defense as a whole is not getting the kudos it deserves.
They have not committed an error in 11 games, their longest streak since going 16 games without an error at the start of the 2022 season. Merrill has robbed two home runs in the past week that proved to be game changers. Opponents have been successful on just 12 of 19 steal attempts, which makes the Padres one of the top five teams in the majors shutting down the running game.
There is no guarantee the players we expect to produce at a high level will produce at a high level. But it is safe to assume they will not continue to be the voids they have been for many of the season’s first 22 games.
The Padres need to hope so. A 162-game season exposes mirages. And the Padres are much better when the Core Four (Bogaerts, Machado, Merrill and Tatis) comes up big as a group.
And remember, it has generally been true the past six years that as Manny Machado goes so go the Padres.
That doesn’t have to be an imperative if the Padres have as deep a lineup as it sometimes seems they do this year.
There is no law against Machado being who he has been and the rest of the team contributing. In fact, it probably has to happen for them to be what they hope to be.
But there is merit to the Padres being buoyed by their early success.
“It’s a good sign,” Merrill said, “when two guys in the lineup are not producing as much and the rest of the team is taking care of business.”
Another one
Maybe you had not heard of Walbert Ureña. You have now. And you will again.
The 22-year-old right-hander was throwing 101 mph sinkers and disappearing changeups all afternoon while he mostly dominated the Padres yesterday in his first major league start.
Ureña allowed one run through six innings before walking two batters at the start of the seventh and having one of those runners score after he departed.
His outing was the 12th quality start against the Padres this season, most against any team.
The Padres are 6-6 in those games.
How remarkable is that? The other 29 MLB teams have a combined .294 winning percentage when an opposing pitcher turns in a quality start.
Give Padres pitchers credit for keeping the score close in those six games so the offense can do enough to win. But as we have talked about before, credit the offense for doing what it can to make some really good starting pitchers work.
And the Padres have faced really good pitchers.
Nine of the starters they have faced have an ERA of 3.30 or better.
“You go up against arms like this, you’re not going to win 8-2 games,” Gavin Sheets said. “I mean, you’re just not. This guy comes up from Triple-A, the stuff that he has is as good as anybody in the big leagues. … So what we’re doing a really good job of is we’re taking advantage of the opportunities we’re getting, we’re clawing at-bats out. We’re making a pitch count go up. We’re in a stretch of (facing) really good arms, and we’re playing really good baseball. So it’s a good sign.”
It does seem to be.
However, we should note that the Padres would do well to start producing more against these top-flight starters. For one thing, when the postseason comes around the best starters will be backed up by the best bullpens.
And as manager Craig Stammen said on Friday night, “If we want to be the best, we’ve got to figure out a way to beat the best. 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.”
King makes it work
Michael King threw five fewer pitches yesterday than he did in his complete game shutout of the Rockies a little more than a year ago, on April 13, 2025.
He made it through five innings on the 105 pitches he threw yesterday.
King is still working to get right mechanically after a season in which he made just 15 starts and spent a good amount of time trying to pitch through knee pain.
“I definitely have not found that stride yet,” he said.
The best thing that can be said about a day in which King threw too many pitches was that he made good ones when he had to.
The Angels had runners at first and third with one out in the first inning and first and second with one out in the fourth inning. They had a runner on first base with one out in two other innings.
And they did not score against King, as he continued to be at his best when threatened.
“I was a reliever,” he said in reference to his time with the Yankees before being acquired by the Padres before the 2024 season. “… I took a lot of pride in that, in terms of when you got yourself in some bad situations, you’ve got to put yourself out. I did it a lot (as a reliever), and so I kind of knew those situations and knew how to navigate it. It definitely leads to five innings and 105 pitches instead of being efficient. But I pride myself on going deep in games, but I also pride myself on putting up zeros. So it’s kind of the give and take when you don’t have your best stuff.”
Being a pitcher who doesn’t allow damage is no small thing.
King has the 16th best ERA in the major leagues (2.28) because he is excellent at being good enough when he isn’t at his best.
But to be elite, he can’t do what he did yesterday. He threw a first-pitch strike to just eight of the 20 batters he faced and had three-ball counts against seven of the first 14 batters he faced.
“It’s been a battle,” he said. “I don’t know if there’s been a game yet that I’ve had my ‘A’ stuff. I’m always missing one of the pitches, and the sinker has been lately. I think that’s been making it a lot harder to breeze through lineups. I’m 1-0 to a lot of guys, because I’m missing the sinker, whereas when I’m on, I feel like I can just get up 0-1 with heaters and then be able to expose the chase (with secondary pitches). So it hasn’t been easy. But looking up, and I think I’m 3-1 now with some kind of bad stuff. It’s comforting to know that once I keep stacking these work days and figure it out, that it hopefully will get easier.”
Joining the club
There is Mason Miller and Jason Adam and Adrian Morejón. There is even Jeremiah Estrada and David Morgan.
And maybe there is now Bradgley Rodriguez.
“You’re looking at the rest of the bullpen, and I’m the youngest one, the little one of the group,” Rodriguez said yesterday through interpreter Jorge Merlos. “And it’s just like, ‘You know what? I’m just going to go out there and do my best and do my job.’”
The potential of Rodriguez has been on display since he showed up late last season and began getting outs with a fastball that touched 100 mph and a plus changeup.
He has also been prone to command issues, like most young relievers, and the Padres have kept him mostly working in medium- and low-leverage situations.
Yesterday, they had no choice but to have him enter in place of Kyle Hart in the seventh inning, with runners on second and third and one out.
Rodriguez allowed one of those runners to score on a groundout that cut the Padres’ lead to 2-1 before intentionally walking Mike Trout and finishing off the seventh. He then struck out two batters in a 1-2-3 eighth inning.
Pitching coach Ruben Niebla said Rodriguez is “building calluses” with outings like yesterday.
“Just putting him in that situation is good for him,” Niebla said. “Him showing that no-back-down attitude, it’s going to be big for him.”
The Padres had to make do without Adam for the first two weeks of the season. They have been without Estrada for almost two weeks. Over the course of a long season, having an abundance of arms capable of stepping up is what sets apart the best bullpens.
“We trust Bradgley a lot,” Stammen said. “We view him as an elite part of our bullpen and someone that’s going to be a part of our bullpen for a long time and pitching kind of those important spots. He hasn’t done it as much this year, just because we have so many other guys that can pitch in the back end. But he proved today what he can do. Coming in at the top of their lineup and kind of going through it and settling the game down in the seventh and eighth for us, that was big. That was huge. Without Bradgley today, we’d have had a tough time winning that game.”
Quest for better
The way Miller is pitching this season, what he did Saturday qualified as a hiccup.
While getting a save and extending his scoreless innig streak, Miller faced two batters above the minimum for the first time in his 10 appearances this season. He allowed a single and a walk in the same inning! He had allowed one of each in his previous 9⅓ innings.
Well, he got back on track yesterday, striking out two of the three batters he faced and taking just 13 pitches to lock down his eighth save.
“The way I’m looking at things is just outing to outing,” Miller said. “Just because I’ve been having a lot of success doesn’t mean there haven’t been things that I want to work on or focus on or change outting to outing. Success is a scary place sometimes where you get complacent. So just staying up on everything and always focusing on getting a little better.”
Miller is now one inning away from tying Cla Meredith’s franchise record of 33⅔ scoreless innings set in 2006.
No one in baseball history has ever matched what Miller is doing. By striking out 27 of the 38 batters he has faced, he is the only pitcher since at least 1900 with 71.1% strikeout rate over his first 11 appearances in a season. And no pitcher has ever in any 11-game span struck out 27 batters and allowed no more than four baserunners while throwing no more than 11⅓ innings.
Miller’s final two strikes yesterday came on Logan O’Hoppe’s swings at a 102 mph fastball and an 89 mph slider. And they illustrated why Miller is virtually impossible to hit when he is on.
Here is video of the pitches:
Mason Miller, 102mph Fastball and 89mph Slider, Individual Pitches + Overlay pic.twitter.com/gMn8S0U7lB
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) April 19, 2026
Like it happens every day
Since getting just four hits in his first 32 at-bats with the Padres in 2024, Johnson has hit .317/.364/.398 in 137 plate appearances.
After getting two of the Padres’ five hits yesterday, Johnson is 4-for-16 with three steals this season. His RBI single in the seventh inning, which served as the deciding RBI, was followed by his stealing his third base of the season.
“He’s a grinder,” Merrill said. “He could be in there every day.”
Johnson started in right field yesterday, as Tatis started at second base in place of Jake Cronenworth. It was Johnson’s fourth start of the season.
“I come to the field every day like I’m starting,” he said. “I have to. That’s just the way I’m built. … I mean, you always want to contribute any way you can. Two-out RBIs like that boost your confidence and stuff like that. So it feels really good.”
Leave it be
Tatis singled to right field, stole second and scored on Bogaerts’ two-out single in the fourth inning.
It was the latest example of how Tatis has been able to contribute this season while waiting for his power to kick in.
He has far more hits to center and right field than he does to left.
I have wondered to Tatis and others repeatedly and in many different forms about why he isn’t leaning more into his pull-side power. When he led the National League in home runs in 2021, his fly ball pull rate was the highest of his career by far.
“I don’t need to pull the ball more,” Tatis said tersely at one point. “It’s more about really driving the ball to right-center field. And when I’m doing that the right way, everything just just takes off. In ‘21 when I had all those homers, half of my homers were to center to right field. The balls I pulled were mistakes the pitchers were making.”
It is true, 19 of those 42 homers were to center field or right field.
And here are the mostly meaty pitches he crushed to left field in 2021:
“His ability to rotate his hips and stay inside the ball is great,” hitting coach Steven Souza Jr. said. “So it’s just about getting him in consistent positions that he’s able to unleash the swing over and over again. He has the ability to leave any ballpark in any part of the field. And I think we can get pigeonholed into, ‘My only power is pull side.’ For him, that’s not the case. He’s a special talent. So it’s being able to say, ‘Hey, I can do what Ohtani does. I can do what Aaron Judge does, I can go anywhere.’ When you’re able to lead that ball to right-center field on the heater, it’s just a difficult thing for pitchers to kind of game plan against you. And I think when he’s not panicking against that stuff, it’ll come out naturally.”
It is not that pulling the ball is not an important tool to have in the bag. Tatis’ blasts to left field are generally majestic. It’s that he needs to let them come. When he tries to pull is when he starts to chase and when his body flies open and everyone watching can tell he is not in a good place.
How often can you say that this season about the guy who is leading the major leagues in hard hits? Not very often.
“We want to get the ball in the air, pull side,” Souza said. “How we do that is super important. As long as he’s inside the ball and what he’s pulling in the air, that’s the most important thing. … And pitchers are careful with him. Some of these hits that he’s getting, they’re balls, they’re balls on the black, and he’s hitting lasers all over.”
Canning planning
Starting pitcher Griffin Canning threw a between-starts bullpen session yesterday at Angel Stadium and will make his fourth rehab start Wednesday for Triple-A El Paso.
Canning, who suffered an Achilles injury pitching for the Mets in June, could be inserted in the rotation as soon as the first week of May.
“I definitely think sooner rather than later,” Canning said.
After allowing two runs over 5⅔ innings in his first two starts for El Paso, he threw 67 pitches in his last start while allowing six runs (two earned) and walking four in 2⅔ innings.
“Just a little rusty,” Canning said. “This is my spring training. Trying to sharpen up. Health-wise, I feel great.”
He was working on the best of his six big-league seasons when he went down in his 16th start of 2025. He had a 3.77 ERA at the time. He had gone at least five innings while allowing two or fewer runs in half his starts.
Tidbits
I was remiss to not write about the atmosphere created by the overwhelming number of Padres fans at Saturday’s game. So thankfully Tom Krasovic wrote about it (here) yesterday after Padres fans showed up again for the series finale.
The Padres have at least one extra-base hit in 19 consecutive games. That is tied for the fourth-longest streak in the majors this season.
Ramón Laureano was 0-for-4 yesterday, ending his hitting streak at seven games. Luis Campusano was 0-for-2 before Cronenworth pinch-hit for him, which ended Campusano’s on-base streak at nine games. The longest active hitting streak on the team is now two games (Bogaerts, Johnson, Tatis). The longest on-base streak is four (Fermin, Tatis).
Cronenworth was initially not in the lineup because the Padres were supposed to face left-hander Reid Detmers yesterday. When the Angels switched to Ureña, Stammen decided to keep Cronenworth on the bench at the start in part to give him some rest after he was hit in the face by a pitch on Saturday.
Yesterday was the eighth time the Padres scored the deciding run in the seventh inning or later this season. That is impressive. They would also like to not have to do so. One thing that could help is scoring in the first inning. Their two first-inning runs this season are more than only the one apiece by the Athletics and Royals.
Estrada is playing catch and throwing plyo balls already, less than two weeks after going on the injured list with elbow tendinitis. He said the discomfort in his elbow has largely dissipated and he feels stronger. The Padres are encouraged, but there is no timetable for his return. Said Estrada: “I’m not trying to rush it.”
It appears reliever Yuki Matsui is healthy, but unless there is an injury (or two) or fellow left-hander Kyle Hart struggles enough, the Padres don’t seem have a place for him in their bullpen. The longest the Padres can keep Matsui, who suffered an adductor strain in spring training, on his rehab assignment is through May 3. Matsui would have to agree to a minor-league assignment, as his contract includes a clause that he can’t be sent down.
All right, that’s it for me.
No game today, so no Padres Daily tomorrow.
I will have a story on our Padres’ page later today previewing the remaining five games of the road trip — and specifically that they will be played in ballparks that are 5,200 and 7,300 feet above sea level.
Next newsletter will be delivered to your inbox Wednesday morning.