{"id":594836,"date":"2026-02-26T21:51:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T21:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/594836\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T21:51:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T21:51:14","slug":"david-morgans-drive-a-difference-maker-as-he-pushes-to-move-up-in-padres-bullpen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/594836\/","title":{"rendered":"David Morgan’s drive a difference-maker as he pushes to move up in Padres’ bullpen"},"content":{"rendered":"

PEORIA, Ariz. \u2014 David Morgan<\/a> may yet buy that Ford Bronco Raptor he\u2019s been eyeing since becoming a big-leaguer, but the 26-year-old reliever is in no hurry to move on from the dark gray 2020 Toyota Tacoma that he purchased shortly after signing as an undrafted free agent.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like that little truck,\u201d Morgan said with a smile. \u201cI\u2019m going to drive that thing for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s already driven it all over, from Southern California to Texas and Indiana and plenty of stops in between before arriving at the Peoria Sports Complex earlier this month for his first big-league camp.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s right.<\/p>\n

A right-hander with a fastball that ranked higher than 92% of big-leaguers last year was so far off the radar last spring that pitching coach Ruben Niebla can\u2019t help but use Morgan\u2019s path as an example \u2014 from minor league spring training to a NL Wild Card Series roster in less than eight months \u2014 when addressing the horde of pitchers who\u2019ve filed into camp as non-roster invitees this spring.<\/p>\n

\u201cBe conscious of it: This can happen very quickly,\u201d Niebla said.<\/p>\n

\"MissionMission Viejo\u2019s David Morgan looks frustrated after striking out to end the fifth inning against Aliso Niguel during Mission Viejo\u2019s 7-3 loss to Aliso Niguel in a South Coast League baseball game at Aliso Niguel High in Aliso Viejo on Wednesday, Mar. 14, 2018. (Photo by Kevin Sullivan\/Orange County Register\/SCNG)
\nA switch to pitching<\/p>\n

Morgan and that trusty Tacoma moved quickly once he picked a lane.<\/p>\n

The San Diego native had been a highly-regarded infielder<\/a> as he moved from Mission Viejo High School to Orange Coast College, but the 6-foot, 185-pound infielder did not boast power.<\/p>\n

Morgan started throwing off the mound a bit after transferring to Hope International University and continued to dabble in pitching in the West Coast summer league in Portland, Ore.<\/p>\n

By the time his new agent, Nik Lubisich, had a serious conversation with him about his future as a pitcher, he\u2019d only thrown 19\u2153 innings between the two stops and was armed with just a fastball. Morgan had been messing around with a curveball, but didn\u2019t actually throw it until a workout at Petco Park a week before the draft.<\/p>\n

The Padres saw enough to want him as a pitcher.<\/p>\n

The deal that his hometown team<\/a> offered \u2014 $125,000 as an undrafted free agent \u2014 seemed like an obvious sign.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the Padres had told me was nothing but good stuff,\u201d Morgan said. \u201cThey were a little bit more bought in on me as a pitcher than the other teams were as a shortstop. So yeah, kind of made my decision really easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The path forward was not.<\/p>\n

Morgan admittedly began his career on the mound as a thrower, learning as he went. There have been good days \u2014 he had a 3.54 strikeout-to-walk ratio over 44\u2154 innings at two A-ball stops in 2023.\u00a0And there have certainly been bad days \u2014 he had a 5.45 ERA in 33\u2154 innings after moving to Double-A San Antonio in 2024.<\/p>\n

In the midst of one particularly frustrating stretch, Morgan met with Missions pitching coach Jeff Andrews.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a couple tough outings in a row and he came to me and said, \u2018Hey, what do you have for me?\u2019\u201d Morgan recalled. \u201cAnd I felt kind of lost. I said, \u2018No, what do you have for me?\u2019 He kind of snapped on me and was like, \u2018That\u2019s not how this is going to work. That\u2019s not how your career was going to work. Like, you need to be smart enough to come to me with something.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd he taught me a really valuable lesson in that understanding that this is my career, that I have to be the one who makes the necessary changes to be better.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DavidDavid Morgan #66 of the San Diego Padres reacts after striking out Ryan Mountcastle #6 of the Baltimore Orioles during the sixth inning at Petco Park on Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025 in San Diego, CA. (Meg McLaughlin \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)
\nFast track<\/p>\n

Morgan sat on that conversation for a bit before he came up with something. He\u2019d settled into a consistent arm slot, but he was finally open to removing the high leg kick that he believed made him \u201cathletic\u201d on the mound.<\/p>\n

The streamlined delivery made for a more direct path to the plate, allowing him better command of a high-90s heater.<\/p>\n

The Padres thought enough of Morgan to send him to the Arizona Fall League after the 2024 season, but a 13-to-10 strikeout-to-walk ratio over 8\u2154 innings (6.23 ERA) did not warrant an invitation to big-league camp.<\/p>\n

Morgan seemed to flip a switch to start the 2025 season, striking 19 against one walk over 8\u2154 innings and posting a 3.12 ERA for San Antonio. On April 27, Morgan earned a call-up directly from Double-A.<\/p>\n

Morgan did not get into a game during that first cup of coffee, but he continued to fill up the zone with Triple-A El Paso. He earned a return trip to San Diego before the end of May.<\/p>\n

This time, Morgan got into games.<\/p>\n

The righty\u2019s athleticism stood out to the Niebla. As the Padres\u2019 pitching coach watched Morgan\u2019s delivery over and over that first couple weeks, he noticed a squared-up release point that presented an opportunity to add a two-seamer. A slider and a curve had glove-side break, but a pitch with arm-side action would help get hitters off the four-seamer up in the zone.<\/p>\n

So after Morgan allowed a run in his first inning of work in a blowout win over the Dodgers, Niebla asked him if he\u2019d ever thrown a sinker or two-seamer. Morgan said he had a grip, but that he\u2019d only ever really spiked that pitch while playing with it in spring training.<\/p>\n

Niebla passed along a cue or two and asked Morgan to show the new pitch to Kik\u00e9\u00a0Hernandez to start the next inning.<\/p>\n

The longtime Dodgers utility man took the surprise pitch on the outside corner for a strike. The next sinker missed outside, but Hernandez fouled off the ensuing four-seamer at the top of the zone and swung through a curve to punch out, the start of a 26-outing run (1.44 ERA) that placed Morgan firmly in the Padres\u2019 postseason plans.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Morgan\u2019s case, it\u2019s him being able to get not only get up to the big leagues and have success, it was the behavior, the mindset, the competitiveness,\u201d Niebla said. \u201cIt\u2019s these other things that really allow pitchers to be able to stay at the major league level and have success and know how to deal with failures. And that\u2019s what one thing that he did really well. \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the kind of stuff that separates him from guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new two-seamer wasn\u2019t a dominant offering, as hitters managed a .250 average off it, but it was enough of a wrinkle to have hitters managing a .185 batting average off his prized 97.5 mph four-seamer. Morgan\u2019s curveball and slider were also tough pitches to hit; opponents put up .200 averages on each. With each outing, Morgan proved more and more trustworthy to a bullpen that lost Jason Adam to a quad injury for the final month of the season.<\/p>\n

Morgan didn\u2019t just make the postseason roster after a brief shutdown for a tired shoulder; he struck out two of the three batters he faced in the eighth inning of a tight Game 3 loss to the Cubs.<\/p>\n

\"Peoria,Peoria, AZ \u2013 February 18: David Morgan #66 of the San Diego Padres poses for a portrait on February 18, 2026 in Peoria, Arizona. (K.C. Alfred \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)
\n\u2018I want to do it right\u2019<\/p>\n

Morgan said he spent last spring \u201cfully selling out to finding a way to make it the big leagues.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCame into it pretty hot, kind of throwing my max velocity, trying to prove to these guys the stuff that I had,\u201d he said. \u201cDidn\u2019t really have many expectations on me coming into it last year, because I\u2019ve never really proven anything, so I just kind of came into it and was like, I got nothing to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morgan should have his share of opportunities in 2026, in part because of what he did last year. While Adam is tracking toward possibly being ready for opening day following last year\u2019s season-ending quadriceps injury, closer Robert Suarez departed to Atlanta as a free agent and Yuki Matsui\u2019s early availability is in question after tweaking his groin.<\/p>\n

There are leverage innings to be had and expectations to navigate for a team that expects its bullpen to lead the way.<\/p>\n

And Morgan only knows one way forward: Pedal to the metal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to do it right,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not something to run from or be afraid of. It\u2019s dive into it and understand that when I was here last year, that was something that I wanted then, and if that\u2019s something that comes my way now, I have to take advantage of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut no nerves about it, no stress about it. Just throw the ball the way I did last year in a couple more leverage innings and take control of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PEORIA, Ariz. \u2014 David Morgan may yet buy that Ford Bronco Raptor he\u2019s been eyeing since becoming a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":594837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2407],"tags":[5,853,4,43,137,18,4339,4338,185,3546],"class_list":{"0":"post-594836","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego-padres","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-padres","12":"tag-san-diego","13":"tag-san-diego-padres","14":"tag-sandiego","15":"tag-sandiegopadres","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-top-stories-sdut"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116139149811941427","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}