Good morning from Boston,<\/p>\n
There are moments that end up mattering.<\/p>\n
Last night might have been such a moment for Fernando Tatis Jr. and, by extension, for the Padres.<\/p>\n
You can read in my game story (here<\/a>) about that moment and the others that led to the Padres\u2019 3-2 victory over the Red Sox.<\/p>\n The Padres may or may not be thisclose on offense. At times it appears they are. At others, it does not. Appearances aside, it is simply too early to know.<\/p>\n The passing of time is the only thing that will reveal the veracity of their contentions and what some of the underlying numbers suggest regarding the quality of their at-bats not being reflected in their production.<\/p>\n What we should be looking for at this early stage of the season are signs of what might be ahead.<\/p>\n And in last night\u2019s ninth inning, in the midst of plenty of indications the Padres have problems, there was a moment that might have provided a sign that Tatis is still Tatis \u2014 and maybe even has grown into a more complete version of himself.<\/p>\n The Padres\u2019 most dynamic player \u2014 the one on which they place so much of their hope \u2014 had struck out four times yesterday before walking to the plate to face Red Sox closer Aroldis Chapman with two outs and nobody on in the ninth inning of a tie game.<\/p>\n With fans standing up and cheering behind him and to his sides and out beyond the Green monster and Pesky\u2019s Pole, Tatis fouled off a 99 mph sinker at the top of the zone. Chapman then bounced the next pitch, a splitter, halfway between the mound and the plate to even the count 2-2.<\/p>\n Then came another elevated 99 mph sinker, just a bit lower in the zone than the one he had fouled off, and Tatis did what he and other Padres batters have failed to do too often this season.<\/p>\n He did damage.<\/p>\n Tatis lined the pitch at 114 mph over the head of center fielder Ceddanne Rafaela, who helped out by taking a step in and to his right before turning back to give chase. The ball one-hopped the wall, and Tatis had a double.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the best part of baseball, right?\u201d Tatis said after the game. \u201cYou just never know. That\u2019s why there\u2019s 27 outs to be played, and that\u2019s why you just keep your (expletive) head in the game. \u2026 I always know I just need one swing to change the game. To put something in motion, it only takes one swing.\u201d<\/p>\n It was Ram\u00f3n Laureano\u2019s swing that sent a too-high splitter into left-center field and drove in Tatis with what stood as the winning\u00a0 run.<\/p>\n But we cannot let the significance of Tatis setting aside four strikeouts to come through against one of the game\u2019s most imposing closers.<\/p>\n The Padres and Tatis, now 27 years old, have been talking about his maturation process for a while. And there have certainly been signs of that in recent years.<\/p>\n But growing up isn\u2019t so significant in the context of being a ballplayer if it isn\u2019t accompanied by production.<\/p>\n Players like Tatis don\u2019t get nine-figure contracts just because a team believes they are going to put up big numbers consistently. They get paid to come up big in big moments.<\/p>\n And the man who frequently made big moments submit to his will early in his career and again for parts of 2024 (including that postseason) had been a non-factor in more of those moments of late.<\/p>\n In his first five seasons, he hit .305 with a .910 OPS in 343 plate appearances in high-leverage situations. But in the 91 high-leverage plate appearances from the start of last season up until the end of yesterday\u2019s game, he hit .261 with an .863 OPS.<\/p>\n Those are not terrible numbers. But they are not statue contract numbers<\/a>.<\/p>\n Plus, Tatis walked to the plate in the ninth inning batting .172 (5-for-29) this season. That included his being 0-for-10 against left-handers, of which Chapman is one.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t give up,\u201d Tatis said. \u201cStay locked in. It\u2019s baseball. You never know what this rollercoaster is going to bring. That\u2019s why you keep your head in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n Sure. But anyone who has watched Tatis knows that has not always been how he reacts to bad results early in games.<\/p>\n Last night, he played the kind of game that made four strikeouts a footnote instead of the headline.<\/p>\n Before the hit in the ninth, Tatis took away an extra-base hit by getting a fantastic jump and running 90 feet to chase down a 104 mph line drive to the gap in right-center field for the second out of the sixth inning.<\/p>\n \u201cI had to learn how to mature, how to stay in the game, stay locked in, play defense, change the game playing defense,\u201d Tatis said. \u201cYou\u2019ve just got to stay in the game not just for yourself but for the rest of the team that is out there competing.\u201d<\/p>\n Padres manager Craig Stammen, who made it a priority to build up Tatis pretty much from the moment he took the job<\/a>,noted the significance.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s engaged in the game, and he knows that he can impact the game in many different ways,\u201d Stammen said. \u201cAnd he\u2019s not taking his at-bats out to right field. He\u2019s still locked in, and knows that he can make a game saving play, you know, anywhere he is on the field. And that was what we kind of saw. That catch he made in right center is pretty amazing.<\/p>\n Manny takes & Manny\u2019s take<\/p>\n Manny Machado was 0-for-1 in yesterday\u2019s game and also lost one of his two hits from Wednesday due to a scoring change by MLB.<\/p>\n He is batting .174 (4-for-23). That is in part because he has swung and missed on an abundance of pitches he should have hit. Like arguably 10 or so already.<\/p>\n But Machado has a .406 on-base percentage because he is not swinging\u00a0at pitches he should not be swinging at.<\/p>\n He is chasing a mere 23.3% of the pitches he has seen outside the zone. And that includes one game in which he chased eight of 16. Outside that game, he has a 16.9% chase rate.<\/p>\n Last night, he swung at one of 18 pitches out of the zone and walked three times, bringing his season total to nine.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m trying to get pitches to hit,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I do, I\u2019m missing them. So I\u2019ve got to be better at not missing them.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to some of the other underlying numbers talked about in my game story from Friday<\/a> and in yesterday\u2019s newsletter<\/a>, Machado is another piece of evidence for the Padres that their approach at the plate is generally good despite their ranking last in the major leagues in average (.190), and OPS (.554) and being tied for last in runs scored (24).<\/p>\n \u201cManny has been doing a great job controlling the zone, not swinging at, you know, stuff way off the plate, taking great at-bats,\u201d Stammen said. \u201cThose walks are big. Him pushing the pitch limit up of the pitcher. He naturally is going to garner the pitchers to be careful with him. And now he\u2019s using that to his advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked about the offense as a whole last night, after the Padres were held to three or fewer runs for the seventh time in eight games, this is what Machado said:<\/p>\n \u201cI think overall, you\u2019ve got to look at the bright side of things, not just all the negatives,\u201d he said. \u201cLooking from inside the dugout, I think we\u2019re taking really good at-bats. Can we be better? Absolutely. I think we could take advantage of runners in scoring position like we didn\u2019t today. We could have kind of not been so close if we would have scored on some of those opportunities. Absolutely. But we\u2019re taking really good at-bats. We\u2019re swinging at pitches that we need to be swinging at. We\u2019re hitting it hard right at people, but we\u2019re taking really good quality at-bats. And I think that\u2019s a positive.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not taking away from the fact that we\u2019re not scoring runs and taking those opportunities with runners in scoring position that we should be driving in. No excuse for that. But I think we\u2019re taking good at-bats. We just got to keep doing that. I think over a long period of a year, if you do that, I think there will be more better than not.\u201d<\/p>\n Taken away<\/p>\n The scoring change was on the groundball Machado hit to San Francisco Giants third baseman Matt Chapman in Wednesday\u2019s first inning that ended up scoring Jackson Merrill after first baseman Casey Schmitt failed to catch Chapman\u2019s wayward throw.<\/p>\n You can see video of that play embedded in Thursday\u2019s newsletter (here<\/a>).<\/p>\n Didn\u2019t seem it would line up<\/p>\n Last night\u2019s victory might go down as one of the most unlikely in Padres history.<\/p>\n At least it should, based on the social media reaction when the lineup was posted in the afternoon. There was, according to a sampling of the feedback I saw, simply no way the Padres were going to win with Jackson Merrill on the bench and Miguel Andujar batting third and Ty France in the lineup playing first base instead of Nick Castellanos.<\/p>\n Jeff Sanders\u2019 pregame story (here<\/a>) explained Stammen was not only stacking his batting order with right-handed hitters against left-handed starter Connelly Early but using an early season game to see what France, Andujar and Bryce Johnson could do in the situations they were put in.<\/p>\n \u201cYou want to keep your guys feeling like they\u2019re part of the team, because they are a big part of the team,\u201d Stammen said Saturday afternoon. \u201cAnd, you know, find opportunities for them to get playing time, especially early in the season. You know, we\u2019re trying to figure out how to use the roster the right way and who can play when and all that kind of stuff. So trying different matchups early is kind of how it is.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not quite like college football, where if you lose the first game you\u2019re out. I\u2019m a Notre Dame fan. They lost the first two games, they\u2019re out of the College Football Playoff after two weeks. The Major League Baseball season affords you a little bit of time to mix and match the lineups and figure out what\u2019s best for your team.\u201d<\/p>\n One feature of yesterday\u2019s lineup could become a fixture.<\/p>\n Laureano batted second for the first time this season. He went 1-for-4 with a walk and is hitting .308 (8-for-26) with a double and two homers on the season.<\/p>\n \u201cI think Laureano has (had) probably (the) best results and best at-bats that we\u2019ve gotten so far,\u201d Stammen said. \u201cSo probably see him more at the top of the lineup going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n Changing it up<\/p>\n Before last night, Mason Miller had thrown 41 changeups since becoming a full-time relief pitcher in 2024. That accounted for 2% of his 2,033 pitches in that span.<\/p>\n He threw his changeup twice in a row last night to finish off a three-pitch strikeout of Masataka Yoshida for the second out of the ninth inning.<\/p>\n It is not a bad pitch. He gets a strike with it more often than not (19 swinging, four called and six fouls). Opponents are 1-for-7 in at-bats that end on the pitch.<\/p>\n It is merely extraneous given a fastball that averages 101 mph and a slider that is arguably his best pitch. But Miller likes to tinker with the changeup each spring and in bullpen sessions, and he breaks it out from time to time when he thinks it is prudent.<\/p>\n \u201cA one-run game, my four-seam (fastball) is probably my most confident pitch, but it\u2019s also the pitch that can give up the most damage,\u201d Miller said. \u201cYoshida last year had a single on the slider. Hitters, if they have success with something, sometimes they\u2019ll look for that again. So I threw (the changeup) 0-1 just to see where he was at with it. Got a really early swing and some contact. I was like, \u2018I\u2019m gonna just throw one a little further and see what happens.\u2019 He still has to respect a fastball over the outer edge.\u201d<\/p>\n The middle pitch of the three shown here is what happened:<\/p>\n Good morning Mason Miller strikes out the side with some nasty stuff \ud83d\ude33 pic.twitter.com\/kDJidu1IdJ<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 MLB (@MLB) April 4, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n Sanders wrote more about Miller\u2019s use of the changeup in his postgame notebook (here<\/a>). Also in that story, Jeff wrote about\u00a0 France\u2019s hard-hit balls on a night he was feeling the cold and Andujar\u2019s three-hit game.<\/p>\n Rough start<\/p>\n As discussed in my game story, the ninth-inning heroics by Tatis and Laureano were necessary because the Padres\u2019 best relief pitcher from a year ago is not getting outs as easily so far this season.<\/p>\n Adrian Morej\u00f3n, who had an historic level of success stranding runners in 2025<\/a>, has allowed an inherited runner to score or allowed a run in each of his three appearances.<\/p>\n Two singles and a defensive miscue yesterday led to his losing a one-run lead for the second time this season.<\/p>\n Morej\u00f3n surrendered three of the 26 one-run leads or ties he was asked to protect before the All-Star break last season and one of the 12 he inherited after the break.<\/p>\n Quality V\u00e1squez<\/p>\n Left-hander Kyle Hart was warming up and likely was about to enter the game to face left-hander Jarren Duran if Willson Contreras had reached base with one out in the sixth inning.<\/p>\n But that was who Tatis robbed with his running catch, and V\u00e1squez got Wilyer Abreu to ground out to end the inning, completing a night in which he held on for dear life en route to his second quality start.<\/p>\n Sanders wrote (here<\/a>) about V\u00e1squez\u2019s outing and how he is earning Stammen\u2019s trust.<\/p>\n Tidbits<\/p>\n Miller has not allowed a run in his past 24\u2154 innings, a streak that dates to Aug. 6 and is the longest active scoreless streak in the majors. All right, that\u2019s it for me.<\/p>\n Early game today (10:35 a.m. PT). Maybe. It is supposed to begin raining around that time and not stop until evening. So we could be hanging around Fenway Park for a while.<\/p>\n Anyway, talk to you tomorrow.<\/p>\n \t\t\t
Good afternoon
Goodnight <\/p>\n
\nJeremiah Estrada worked his third consecutive scoreless inning and has his ERA down to 9.82 after being charged with four runs in two-thirds of an inning in his season debut.
\nTom Krasovic wrote (here<\/a>) yesterday about Matt Waldron appearing on track to join the Padres sooner than later after his two scoreless outings in Triple-A.
\nLaureano has reached base in six of the seven games he has played. Machado is the only Padres player to have reached base in seven (of eight) games.
\nThe Padres yesterday wore their beautiful brown tops, which they don\u2019t do very often. Most Padres starting pitchers have over the past six seasons preferred the pinstripe road jerseys. But V\u00e1squez (like Yu Darvish) has exquisite taste. We will see what Walker Buehler chooses today.<\/p>\n