following the Padres\u2019 3-1 win in the East Village<\/a>.<\/p>\nA.J. Preller will decide and, whew, it now looks like the crazy outcome won\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n
It appears the Padres, winners of five in a row, will keep baseball\u2019s uber-closer and other attractive trade candidates past the trade deadline Monday afternoon<\/p>\n
Giving Preller more reason to buy than to sell, the Padres (55-53) now sit just 1 1\/2 games behind the Diamondbacks (57-52) and the tumbling Phillies (57-52) for the second and third spots.<\/p>\n
Just six days ago, the picture was darkening fast.<\/p>\n
When the Padres took a third loss in Atlanta that day, a selloff was becoming not unrealistic, what with the team sitting three games under .500 after losing five of seven to begin a critical three-city trip.<\/p>\n
Accustomed to Miller saving them, other Padres may have saved themselves some unpleasantness by sweeping the Marlins in three road games and now the Rockies in two.<\/p>\n
Now they\u2019ll face the Giants four times at Petco Park, then head to Phoenix, and it sure looks like Miller will accompany them.<\/p>\n
Best of all Wednesday for the Padres and another sellout crowd, the bulk-inning pitchers fared well. Kyle Hart and Griffin Canning, whose roles were inverted, totaled 5 2\/3 scoreless innings to further reward the creative tactics adopted recently by manager Craig Stammen, pitching coach Ruben Niebla and bullpen coach Ben Fritz.<\/p>\n
Rather than asking a starter pitcher other than Michael King or Walker Buehler to complete five innings, the Padres are having Canning and others work two to four innings apiece.<\/p>\n
The left-handed Hart threw strikes at a high rate, leading to his 2 2\/3 scoreless innings as the starter.<\/p>\n
Canning induced much chasing from Rockies hitters, sending a 3-0 lead to the game\u2019s final third.<\/p>\n
The tactical shift has contributed to the five-game win streak.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a traditional setup by any means,\u201d Miller said, \u201cbut whether we\u2019ve thrown the ball well or not over the course of the season, we do have a lot of guys that possess a lot of skills. So, putting them into situations that maybe don\u2019t allow them to think as much and just rely on their abilities has been really good lately.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t run a bullpen game every single day,\u201d added the closer, who started six games with the A\u2019s. \u201cBut, if you have two guys that are covering 60, 70% of the game, that makes it a little more doable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Canning said he\u2019s encouraged by how he\u2019s felt in recent weeks, as he seeks to regain the form he displayed last year in pitching to a 3.77 ERA in 16 starts before a June Achilles injury led to surgery.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve felt good all year,\u201d said the right-hander, who has a 6.65 ERA in 65 innings. \u201cMaybe there were some things that were a little different. I do feel like when I hit that year mark, like, the end of June \u2014 they always say, once you get to a year, you\u2019ll start feeling a little bit better \u2014 I did kind of feel that, once I got there. I think I created some bad habits in my delivery that I was working on, at the beginning of the year. But these last five, six outings, I feel pretty good \u201d<\/p>\n
The Padres could\u2019ve avoided having to call upon Miller to get his 28th save. But they didn\u2019t score after scoring three runs in the fourth inning, without putting a hard shot into play.<\/p>\n
Overall, it was a tidy performance.<\/p>\n
Jake Cronenworth made an A-plus defensive play, throwing from his right knee on the grass directly behind second base to deny Cole Carrigg a single.<\/p>\n
Canning picked off Carrigg after the San Diego State alum was plunked by a pitch to lead off the sixth.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw him steal, first pitch, against Michael (King) yesterday, so I was kind of thinking he might be going,\u201d Canning said.<\/p>\n
The Padres will face a Giants team that recently lost one of its best hitters, SDSU alum Casey Schmitt, to a knee injury.<\/p>\n
Miller will loom in a Padres bullpen that saw Jeremiah Estrada return from the injury list Wednesday and strike out three hitters<\/a>.<\/p>\nPreller will stay busy, regardless of what happens in the next four days.<\/p>\n
Had circumstances forced his hand, Preller would\u2019ve been right to set a price on Miller in the trade market and see if a contender would\u2019ve met it.<\/p>\n
Now it appears we\u2019ll never find out what the price would\u2019ve been.<\/p>\n
The Reaper, it seems, will be staying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More so than usual, the baseball seemed to jump out of Mason Miller\u2019s hand Wednesday afternoon. Seven straight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":765056,"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":["post-765055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego-padres","tag-baseball","tag-latest-headlines","tag-mlb","tag-padres","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-sandiego","tag-sandiegopadres","tag-sports","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117006686183595752","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765055","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=765055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}