Aces And Wild Cards

Examining the hand that's been dealt

The Padres are off to an astounding 15-4 start with both the best record, and the best run differential in baseball. No one would have predicted such a start going into the season. One of the big reasons was the starting pitching rotation which began the season made up of two aces and several question marks. And with Yu Darvish still out, the Padres’ ability to get production from the starting rotation remains a key to banking enough wins to survive into the postseason. As the second home stand of the season came to an end Wednesday the true identity of the rotation is starting to emerge.

The Aces:

Michael King has looked every bit the ace. His pitch movements can look unfair at times:

Courtesy @PitchingNinja

The ridiculous movement on his pitches is what he’s famous for, but in 2025 he’s done something interesting with his straightest pitch:

He’s added enough vertical break to the four-seam fastball that it’s now well above league average. We’re used to him doing this:

Courtesy @PitchingNinja

In 2025 we’ve been seeing him do this:

Courtesy @dannybarrand_

If King simply pitches the way he has through his first four starts he’ll contend for the Cy Young.

Dylan Cease has had a rougher start to the year largely due to a poor outing in Sacramento against the A’s in which he gave up 9 runs on 8 hits. But despite Dylan Cease’s bad performance against the A’s, the rest of his season has looked remarkably similar to where he left off last year:

The big difference is the Hits/9 innings which includes the disastrous first inning against the A’s in which Cease gave up six hits including four singles all with an exit velocity under 78 MPH. Thus far Cease’s underperformance looks more like small sample size theater, with peripherals suggesting he’s going to be fine.

The Question Marks

The biggest question mark in the rotation to start the season was reigning KBO Cy Young equivalent, lefty Kyle Hart.

Hart does not possess stuff on anywhere near the same plane as King or Cease. He’s going to have to find success through location, deception, and sequencing. We wrote about Kyle Hart’s disastrous outing in Chicago in which he couldn’t get out of the first inning, and threw only 9 of his 39 pitches in the strike zone. The problem seemed to be something other than ability. He can throw strikes, he just wasn’t. But if you can’t throw strikes, deception and sequencing quickly stop mattering.

That’s why it was encouraging when Saturday saw something of a return to normalcy for Hart, throwing 39 of his 74 pitches in the zone. There was a particular at bat that showcased what Hart will need to do to be successful in the majors.

Facing Sean Bouchard, Hart started his sequence with an impeccably placed sweeper for strike one. He caught Bouchard guessing on the second pitch, which was a good thing because Hart essentially left a batting practice sinker right down the middle for strike two. On the third pitch Hart came back with another sinker, but with a couple of interesting wrinkles: he reached back for a little more velocity, and (presumably) changed the grip on his sinker to give it different shape. Here’s the whole sequence:

The first pitch sweeper is simply perfect location. But deception and sequencing are what led to the strikeout. It can be a little hard to notice at first, but look at the difference in the pitch shapes of the back to back sinkers:

The second Sinker has a completely different shape, with far less horizontal break, and far more induced vertical break which to a hitter looks like the fastball is rising (it’s actually just dropping slower than the brain anticipates)¹. The extra velocity and induced vertical break left Sean Bouchard swinging late and under what would otherwise be a slightly below average major league fastball:

Part of the deception is how incredibly well Hart repeats his delivery: Here’s the release point for the back to back sinkers which had completely different horizontal and vertical break patterns:

Sinker #1:

Sinker #2:

This is an at bat where everything went right for Hart, including a bit of luck that Bouchard wasn’t sitting fastball on pitch #2.

Mama mia.

Hart only has one pitch that grades out above major league average, his sweeper. And though it’s early in his second act as a major leaguer it really looks this pitch is going to be a key to his success. It’s the pitch he throws most often, and you can see why when he locates it well it’s going to be a real challenge for hitters:

Hart is also supposed to have a very good change up, though most of the changeups he’s thrown so far have been uncompetitive offerings:

There isn’t enough sample size to make any real assessment of how effective the pitch might be, but it does look good when he executes it:

It’s very hard for a pitcher with a 89-90 MPH fastball to be effective, but there’s at least a chance that Hart might reach success at the major league level. He’s not going to be an ace, but he doesn’t have to be to help the Padres bank enough wins to survive to the postseason. He has the slimmest margin for error of any pitcher on the staff (until Waldron is back). His starts are going to be a high wire act.

A Different Question

The questions regarding Nick Pivetta are in some ways the opposite of Hart’s. Pivetta has already had success at the major league level, but not nearly to the degree that many have predicted for him. His stuff grades out as that of an ace:

Pivetta’s pitches have elite shapes. The induced vertical break on his fastballs are some of the best in the league, and he has a high-spin high-break curveball that he throws for strikes. He’s 6’5 and gets great extension on his pitches. And he has a career strikeouts/9 innings of almost 10. What’s even more impressive is that for the past four seasons in Boston he’s drastically cut down on the number of walks he issues while maintaining that elite strikeout rate:

But despite these impressive peripherals, Pivetta has never been an ace. And when you watch him pitch this last fact is hard to square:

The curveball is a hammer:

Courtesy @PitchingNinja

And the fastball can be overpowering:

That’s a carnivore playing with its food.

On Wednesday he was dotting both the curveball and the fastball against the second best offense in MLB:

He just doesn’t have the look or the peripherals of a middling starter. But that’s what his career stats say he is. He’s never had a season with an ERA under 4.04, and for his career he’s at 4.69.

One of the reasons for this is he’s very home run prone. In 2024 he gave up 1.7 HR/9 innings, a mark that tied for the major league worst among starters. And for his career he’s at a mediocre 1.5 HR/9. And it could be that it’s just a matter of time before this side of him comes out and the sterling 1.57 ERA he’s put up through his first four starts as a Padre regresses.

But there is something else to consider. Pivetta has played his entire career with only the Phillies and Red Sox. If you’ve ever lived in Boston or Philadelphia you’ll undoubtedly remember the unbelievably hot and humid summer nights that span most of the baseball season. These atmospheric conditions have measurable effects on the flight of the baseball. And there’s a bit of evidence this might’ve plagued Pivetta in the past. Here are his career home and away splits for home runs per 9 innings:

1.617 HR/9 in Citizen’s Bank Park + Fenway

1.395 HR/9 in all other ballparks

Pivetta has always been a flyball pitcher, and he will continue to be. But there’s no doubt that playing home games at Petco will some effect on those fly balls. Here’s a case study. During the homestand Fernando Tatis Jr. hit this tactical nuke off Angel Chivilli:

This was 112.8 MPH off the bat with a 27 degree launch angle. It travelled 411 feet.

Consider that ever ball ever hit in the Statcast database with at least 112 MPH exit velocity and a 27 degree launch angle was a home run:

Now consider that the Hit Distance of only 411 feet means that this would only have been a home run in 26/30 major league ball parks.

This is because this ball would have traveled much further in other ballparks.

Here’s shot from the stands showing what the atmospheric conditions were like that night:

Courtesy @sandiegoeq1

The marine layer was dense and cold. The flight of the ball was affected.

Now here’s ball hit by Alex Bregman in Fenway Park:

This ball was hit well, 103.9 MPH off the bat with the same 27 degree launch angle, but despite being 9 MPH slower off the bat than Tatis’, it travelled an identical 411 feet. And it’s only April. The Boston summer heat and humidity hasn’t even set in.

This is just a single aspect of the Nick Pivetta enigma to consider. But why he hasn’t been a more successful major league pitcher given his command, stuff, and athleticism is an interesting mystery. One that we’re excited to see unfold. This is probably wishcasting, but a version of Pivetta that was not as prone to the long ball would likely have at least the semblance of an ace. That version would probably look a lot like the Pivetta we’ve seen in 2025.

The Biggest Question

What the hell is this:

When do we start to believe in Randy Vasquez? When we can understand his success. And we do not understand this stat line.

It’s not wild to think Vasquez may one day evolve into an effective starter. He has tools, decent velocities with super high spin rates on the pitches he throws. In 2024 six of the seven pitches he throws regularly graded out above league average:

But none of his pitches have graded out better this year. And while his end results through his first four starts couldn’t have been much better, those starts were all white knuckle rides. Deep counts, lots of walks, and lots of stranded runners. And the occasional exit velocity that breaks the sound barrier.

It has been a delight to see Vasquez have so much success through his first four starts. But thus far his success has only caused more, not less, confusion about what to expect from his spot in the rotation. If he’s able to keep it up, and if we’re able to discern why, we’ll write more about it. Until then, keep your seatbelt fastened.

More Questions

There are plenty more questions to address to determine whether the torrid start to the season can be maintained. Injury woes are already testing the team’s depth, and on Wednesday the team traded for the erstwhile end-of-bench Padre Bryce Johnson, an ominous sign about the team’s expectations for a nearterm return to action for its center fielders. But the biggest question going in to this season was how the team would navigate 162 games with a depleted rotation. And the early returns are certainly more positive than some of the plausible preseason worst case scenarios. And there is reason to think the team might really have something in Nick Pivetta. Every baseball season is like this. Players take unexpected leaps (and occasionally the opposite). Forecasting only gets you so far. Once the season starts it’s time to analyze. It’s time to watch the games. Those that’ve done so this year have been richly rewarded. The season’s still quite long, and mysteries still abound. And we’ll be writing about what we see as the murky outlines of the team’s true identity comes into focus.

1. The truth is that pitchers have long outpaced the conventional taxonomy of pitches. Calling these pitches both ‘Sinkers’ has to do with the similarity in spin axis, however the movement profile of the second Sinker was much closer to a four-seamer, but with much more horizontal break than the typical non-Paul Skenes four-seamer.