{"id":659190,"date":"2026-04-02T17:21:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T17:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/659190\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T17:21:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T17:21:00","slug":"padres-manager-not-ready-to-give-up-on-struggling-pitcher-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/659190\/","title":{"rendered":"Padres Manager Not Ready to Give Up on Struggling Pitcher Yet"},"content":{"rendered":"

The start of the 2026 season hasn’t gone according to plan<\/a> for the San Diego Padres, and it’s been a struggle from the starting rotation. This was the big question mark for the team<\/a> entering the season, and so far, the expected issue has rung true. <\/p>\n

Right-handers Michael King and Randy V\u00e1squez have performed well so far, giving the team some hope. But others within the starting rotation have struggled heavily, including veteran righty Germ\u00e1n M\u00e1rquez, who made his debut with the Padres on Tuesday against the San Francisco Giants.<\/p>\n

M\u00e1rquez only lasted three innings against the Giants, allowing eight hits, four runs, one walk and two home runs with one strikeout. It was an outing to forget for the veteran arm, and his performance didn’t justify him winning the fifth rotation spot this spring.<\/p>\n

However, Padres manager Craig Stammen isn’t ready to give up on M\u00e1rquez after just one start. Stammen believes in his guys and is confident that the veteran will be just fine.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou try not to judge people on one outing, especially a three-inning outing or a four-inning outing,\u201d Stammen said. \u201cThese guys are big-league pitchers, and we\u2019ll try to hopefully give them a little bit of a chance to prove themselves before we come to any rash decisions on that stuff.\u201d <\/p>\n

Over his career in the big leagues, M\u00e1rquez has been very up-and-down in terms of his success on the mound. M\u00e1rquez had spent his entire MLB career as a member of the Colorado Rockies, but he signed with San Diego this offseason in the hope of making the rotation. <\/p>\n

His outings in spring were also mixed, but Stammen believed that the veteran could be a crucial part of the starting rotation. In 16.1 innings of work during the spring, M\u00e1rquez posted an ERA of 7.16.<\/p>\n

San Diego doesn’t have many other options to throw out on the mound right now due to injuries and a lack of depth. So for now, M\u00e1rquez will likely get some more run to prove he can turn things around.<\/p>\n

The best season of M\u00e1rquez’s career came back in 2018 with the Rockies, when he had an ERA of 3.77 over 33 starts. Generally, he has held an ERA over 4.00 during his MLB career, but the Padres were hoping that getting him out of the hitter-friendly Coors Field could help bring that down.<\/p>\n

The Padres will look for better results from M\u00e1rquez in his next start. If he doesn’t bounce back soon, San Diego may be forced to make some changes<\/a> to the pitching plan.<\/p>\n

Sign up to our free newsletter<\/a>\u00a0and follow us on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0X\/Twitter<\/a>\u00a0for the latest news<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The start of the 2026 season hasn’t gone according to plan for the San Diego Padres, and it’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659191,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2407],"tags":[5,4,43,137,18,4339,4338],"class_list":{"0":"post-659190","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-mlb","10":"tag-padres","11":"tag-san-diego","12":"tag-san-diego-padres","13":"tag-sandiego","14":"tag-sandiegopadres"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116336268550443508","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659190","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=659190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}