On Friday, March 27, the San Diego Padres had a 2-1 lead heading into the eighth inning of a game against the Detroit Tigers.<\/p>\n
Looking for their first win of the season, the Padres called upon right-handed pitcher Jeremiah Estrada to get through the inning.<\/p>\n
Estrada got into immediate trouble, walking the bases loaded with just one out. He then gave up a game-tying hit before generating a big strikeout for the second out of the inning.<\/p>\n
The Padres elected not to bring their best pitcher into the game at that moment. Instead, they called upon Wandy Peralta. He gave up back-to-back hits, and the Padres ended up losing a game they should have won<\/a> by a score of 5-2.<\/p>\n After the game, manager Craig Stammen was asked why the team elected not to bring All-Star closer Mason Miller into the game in the eighth inning.<\/p>\n \u201cIt will be an option at some point in the season,\u201d Stammen said of Miller getting more than three outs. \u201cJust not in Game 2.\u201d<\/p>\n It appeared that the Padres would be careful with Miller early in the season. Then Wednesday’s game happened.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, the Padres entered the eighth inning with a 3-1 lead over the San Francisco Giants. With one on and two out in the inning, Miller entered the game for what would be a four-out save.<\/p>\n He got Heliot Ramos to pop out to end the eighth. The Padres then plated four runs in the bottom of the eighth inning. With the Padres up 7-1, Miller still came out for the ninth, where he struck out the side to earn the Padres their second win of the season.<\/p>\n So why the sudden change in approach just five days later?<\/p>\n \u201cWe kind of needed a win,\u201d Stammen said after the game. \u201cIt\u2019s important to get a win. When we can get a win, we\u2019ve got to get one. Having the appropriate time off after a one-plus [inning outing] is what we were looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cAt this point in the season, with all the off-days in April, it made a little bit more sense today.”<\/p>\n While it’s still just the first week of the season, it’s clear Stammen and the Padres were playing with a bit more urgency after their 1-4 start to the year. The Padres desperately needed a win heading into the day off and road trip, and Stammen made sure they had the right guy to get it done.<\/p>\n Once the Padres went up 7-1, though, Stammen could have elected to replace Miller, meaning he would have just had to record one out in the eighth inning.<\/p>\n Jackson Merrill, however, grounded into a double play with the bases loaded, bringing an abrupt end to the inning.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were probably saying one more [run],\u201d Stammen said of potentially taking Miller out of the game. \u201cThat quick double play kind of ended that discussion.\u201d<\/p>\n Sign up to our free newsletter<\/a> and follow us on X\/Twitter<\/a> and Facebook<\/a> for the latest news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Friday, March 27, the San Diego Padres had a 2-1 lead heading into the eighth inning of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659263,"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-659262","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\/116336445726575139","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659262","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=659262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}