Leveling Up

Threat Analysis

The Padres are 49-45, in possession of the final playoff spot. It’s probable that across the remaining 68 games the Padres will need to win 36 games to make the playoffs. Wild games on Friday and Saturday foreshadowed the challenges the team will face as they try to survive the regular season.

Finding A Routine

Something that’s been missing from 2024 is the routine win. Coming off a 4-2 road trip against two tough teams in the Red Sox and Rangers the Padres returned to San Diego Friday to face the Diamondbacks. The Diamondbacks starter Slade Cecconi had pitched to near a 6.00 ERA on the season. A division - and wild card - rival throwing a highly flammable starter... These are the games you look to win as a matter of routine.

The Padres scored five runs off Cecconi in the first five innings and added two more in the sixth on Kyle Higashioka’s 10th home run of the season. They took a 7-2 lead into the ninth. To this point the game looked like that elusive routine win. Enyel De Los Santos was brought in in the ninth inning to protect the five run lead. And he simply couldn’t. After inducing a lineout by Christian Walker to open the inning he gave up back to back singles to Lourdes Gurriel and Gabriel Moreno. After getting ahead 1-2 to Jake McCarthy, De Los Santos would throw three straight balls to issue a walk that loaded the bases. This brought the tying run to the on deck circle making it a save situation. This was a routine win that got away.

Mike Shildt opted to bring in Robert Suarez for the third day in a row. By now the book is out on Suarez, he is going to pitch almost entirely fastballs, and hitters are adjusting.  The best version of Suarez’ fastballs are so good it doesn’t matter much if the hitter is sitting on it.  A big part of what makes Suarez’ fastball elite is the velocity.  On the season his four seam fastball averages 98.7 MPH and regularly exceeds 99 MPH.  His first fastball Friday was 98.4 MPH.  This isn’t a huge dip below his average, but it’s not nothing, and Alek Thomas jumped all over it hitting a grand slam.

The Padres have benefited tremendously from Suarez’ availability and willingness to pitch multiple innings and consecutive games. It’s hard to know whether his workload contributed to a slight dip in velocity, but we know even fractional miles per hour of velocity matter:

Source: Baseball Prospectus

Suarez would stay in the game and induce a groundout from Geraldo Perdomo, but Corbin Carrol would follow with a first pitch screaming line drive 109 MPH off the bat into right center for a double. This came off a 98.7 MPH four seamer in the heart of the zone. Randall Grichuk pinch hit for an injured Ketel Marte and what followed is pretty straightforward:

When throwing a changeup the one area of the zone you cannot miss with location is up and in. Suarez missed with location badly and Grichuk elevated it down the left field line for a home run, completing the six run comeback.  In a strange inversion of roles Stephen Kolek was brought in to relieve Suarez and was able to mercifully close out the disastrous inning. 

All closers will have bad outings occasionally. And perhaps Suarez not quite reaching his typical velocity, and missing badly with location was not a sign of overuse, just one of those inevitable bad outings all closers will have. But even if this was one of those preordained bad outings, it still holds that Suarez needs days off. As a result of being forced into the game Friday he was fully unavailable Saturday, and it turned out to matter. More on that in a second.

Friday night’s crowd was the largest in Petco Park history at 47,171 in attendance.  The extraordinary ninth inning meltdown threatened to put a stain on what would otherwise be another celebratory milestone in the revitalization of the Padres franchise.  Jurickson Profar led off the bottom of the ninth, Padres now trailing 8-7. Here we should note the MVP is a narrative based award. It often doesn’t go to the player that’s provided the most statistical value in the league.  It typically is awarded to a good player on a good team in a season where that player’s contribution were understood to be of particular importance.  Narratives punctuated by specific moments are what bring those awards home. Profar faced off against Diamondbacks closer Paul Sewald and quickly fell behind 0-2.  But he stared down three pitches just out of the strike zone to work the count full.  On the payoff pitch he did this:

Profar is going to get at least down ballot MVP votes.  Deservedly so. 

Jake Cronenworth followed in the now tied game working a walk to bring up Manny Machado.  Machado took a sweeper for strike one, then fouled off three consecutive pitches, a four seamer, a sweeper, and another four seamer.  Down 0-2, hitters sometimes reduce their bat speed a little opting for more likelihood of contact.  Machado tends to do this but to a small degree.  On the season he’d averaged a bat speed of 73.1 MPH on 0-2 counts, a little slower than his overall average of 74.7 MPH.  But on Friday something was different. He did the opposite of what he normally does. On this 0-2 count he achieved an elite bat speed of 83.4 MPH to dramatic effect:

We chronicled Machado’s heroics against the Nationals in the last homestand. We argued that his at bat against Mackenzie Gore offered some of the first quantifiable proof that players can get to another gear in special moments.  Add another entry to that ledger.   He didn’t quite reach the dizzying heights of the 85.5 MPH swing he placed on Mackenzie Gore’s fastball.  But he clearly reached a gear he’s not always able to in a high adrenaline moment. And that was not a typical 0-2 swing. It was fully 10 MPH faster. That was intent plus execution. He walked it off into a Sea of San Diegans.

The win was special. This was what you would hope for the largest crowd in Petco history. But it foreshadowed a problem that may haunt the Padres down the stretch.

With Suarez unavailable after his emergency use in game one of the Diamondbacks series, the Padres had to turn to Wandy Peralta in extra innings to protect a tie game. For the second night in a row a late inning implosion put the Padres on the ropes. Peralta gave up 3 runs in the top of the 10th. Although the Padres scored a run and loaded the bases in the bottom of the 10th they couldn’t come back, and lost 7-5. We just can’t know how things might’ve turned out had Suarez been allowed to rest on Friday and been available for the 10th on Saturday. But we can reasonably infer the Padres would’ve had a better chance of pulling out the win.

What’s Behind The Bullpen Blowups?

Analyzing bullpen performance is tricky. ERA can be misleading since relievers are often brought into games with runners on base who are attributed to others if allowed to score. Preventing inherited runners from scoring has definitely been a Padres bullpen weakness. They’ve allowed 56 total inherited runners to score, fifth most in MLB. This represents 39% of their total inherited runners, fourth highest (worst) percentage in the league. That’s atrocious. It’s a big part of the issue. But what’s really telling is that the Padres bullpen has faced the second lowest average leverage index on the season. They haven’t just been imploding in high leverage. They’ve been bad in low leverage, and it’s had spillover effects in multiple series this season.

Wandy Peralta managed a good ERA in New York last season despite a high FIP, low strikeout rate, and a very high walk rate. Those peripheral stats are at least a yellow flag if not red. Yuki Matsui was changing leagues and there’s always some risk that performance won’t translate to MLB. But there really weren’t any warning signs about Enyel De Los Santos. He was just very good the past two seasons in Cleveland. Now he’s having a very strange, and very bad season. He has the second highest K/9 at 10.8 of his career and the second best K/BB rate of his career at 3.50. His slider has lost some of its drop, but that pitch has actually gotten positive results with an overall run value of +1. Otherwise his pitch speeds and shapes are similar. But he has given up the highest hard hit rate (46.4%), highest fly ball percentage (29.9%), and highest average exit velocity (89.6 MPH) of his career. You’d expect a pitcher with peripherals like that to also be giving up the most home runs of his career, and indeed De Los Santos is giving up five times as many home runs per nine innings as he had given up the past two seasons in Cleveland where he averaged 0.5 HR/9 in both 2022 and 2023. In 2024 he’s up to 2.6 HR/9 IP which is unplayable for a relief pitcher in any role. The only pitcher in MLB who’s pitched at least 35 innings and has a higher HR/9 IP than Enyel De Los Santos’ 2.6 is Roddery Munoz of the Marlins, a rookie starting pitcher on a last place team giving up 3 home runs per nine innings pitched. In 2023 only four pitchers pitched at least 35 innings and had a HR/9 of 2.6 or higher (Eric Lauer, Corey Kluber, Johnny Cueto, and Jose Urena). All four were starting pitchers, and all had ERA’s over 6.00. Maybe the strangest thing about De Los Santos’ season is that opposing hitters have a .927 OPS after reaching an 0-2 count. Major league average after a hitter reaches an 0-2 count is a .446 OPS. Something really weird is going on with De Los Santos. If this is just who he is he hid it really well the past two seasons in Cleveland.

Robert Suarez, Jeremiah Estrada, and Adrian Morejon were convincingly good in their first half performances. But they’ll continue to be taxed and worn down if improvement isn’t seen from the other arms in the pen. This is probably going to be addressed with a trade.

Starters To Finish

Injuries to Yu Darvish and Joe Musgrove have derailed both veterans’ seasons and thrust not-quite-ready prospects into larger than anticipated roles. Musgrove may look to return in August, but we should remember that he was ineffective for most of the 10 starts he made earlier in the season. His return should be viewed as a total wild card. Sadly it was announced Saturday that Yu Darvish is stepping away from the team for an indefinite period of time to attend to a family matter. The team will give him all the time he needs, and it’s not clear how long that will be. Darvish should not be pressured to return before he’s ready. Even if that means missing a long stretch, or perhaps even the rest of the season. Some things are bigger than baseball. Randy Vasquez and Adam Mazur have been tasked with filling the void.

Randy Vasquez made his 12th start of the season Friday night. It was one of his best. He struck out six and allowed only one walk and two earned runs across 6.1 innings. It was his third quality start of the season, but only the first time he’d gone six innings or more while giving up two runs or fewer. It’s very hard to know what to make of Vasquez. His season ERA is 4.66 but his peripherals look a lot worse. His FIP is 5.14 and his strikeouts/nine innings sit at 5.9, a mark that would be tied for the lowest in the league if he had enough starts to quality for the stat. It’s not hard to see what scouts like about Vasquez long term. He’s thrown six different pitches at least 100 times this season: A four seamer, curveball, sinker, changeup, cutter, and sweeper, all which grade out near or above league average:

Source: TJ Stats

Vasquez is clearly an interesting pitching prospect. But that’s as much as you can say about his contributions so far. He’s been a below average major league starter. As it stands he’s the Padres fourth starter. He figures to get 14 more starts across the final 68 games of the season.

Along with Vasquez, Adam Mazur has been thrust into the role of emergency rotation starter and has made six starts pitching to a 7.52 ERA with a 5.44 FIP and a strikeout/nine innings of only 5.1. Those are not quite position player numbers, but not major league quality either. The difficulty prognosticating Mazur has to do with how different his pitching profile has been in the major leagues compared to his minor league pedigree. His strikeout/walk ratio in the majors is an unthinkable 0.88, and this was simply never an issue for him at any level across amateur or professional baseball. His worst strikeout/walk ratio in the minor leagues was 4.50. Throwing strikes, avoiding walks, just wasn’t a struggle for him before making the Padres roster. Many reasonably felt that a likely explanation for his sudden struggles to throw strikes was rookie nerves affecting his command. The hope here is that he might improve his command as the season goes by and the rookie jitters abate. In fact in Mazur’s last start he showed progress, not walking a single batter. But even when he’s not walking hitters Mazur just doesn’t get any whiffs, and this leads to way too much hard contact. Last Wednesday Mazur faced the Rangers and of the 12 balls put into play seven were hit hard, six harder than 100 MPH. He was lucky to only give up four runs in that outing. On the season his pitches have led to an ice cold 17.7% whiff rate, and his overall strikeout rate is in the lowest 1% of the league at 12.3%. There’s a better pitcher here than the version the Padres have seen, but it’s unclear whether that better version will arrive this season.

Interestingly the Padres have won the last six games where either Vasquez or Mazur made the start. They’ve done it by scoring 7, 6, 9, 9, 6, and 10 runs in those games. That’s a superb run of success. But that type of scoring output simply can’t be counted on. The Padres offense is good, but they only average 4.69 runs/game. It’s very likely mean regression is coming. There’s reason to think that the weak back end of the starting rotation is the biggest risk to their stretch run.

Jhony Brito was sent down to AAA to stretch out as a starter and has a 16.20 ERA in his first two starts, failing to get through three innings in either start.

It just doesn’t look likely that the solution to the back of the rotation woes will come from the currently rostered players. That’s not to say it’s impossible. Vasquez and Mazur could take a leap and provide quality starts down the stretch. Musgrove could return healthy and effective. Jhony Brito could suddenly find it all clicking in El Paso. But those outcomes are improbable. And hoping that something improbable occurs is the opposite of a plan. If Preller hopes to put his thumb on the scale of his team’s fortune addressing the backend of the rotation must be an action item. 

Leveling Up

The Padres are very firmly in the playoff hunt with 68 games to go. Their 49-45 record has them in possession of the third wild card spot. This month should see the return of Xander Bogaerts which will allow for more rest and platoon options for a banged up infield. There remains a small chance Fernando Tatis Jr. will return to play baseball again this season. The offense and defense looks reasonably well equipped for a stretch run. But when you look past the encouraging record you see some signs that things could easily have been worse. Winning six straight Vasquez and Mazur starts probably isn’t going to happen again this year. If it does the Padres are all but assured a playoff birth. But if mean regression occurs, they could find themselves again struggling to land the plane. And while half of the bullpen is a very clear strength, the other have is both woeful and bewildering; failures from Peralta, De Los Santos, and Matsui are straining the front end of the pen to a worrisome degree.

This Padres team is good enough to win in the postseason. Good enough to beat any team when the best starters are on the mound and the top tier bullpen arms are fresh. But they have to survive the next 68 games.

AJ Preller has the unenviable task of prognosticating what the Padres will get from Vasquez, Mazur, Musgrove, Brito, Peralta, De Los Santos, and Matsui down the stretch. This is where his attention should be. This month will be all about the looming trade deadline. This team needs to level up, and Preller has more information than anyone on the planet about how to do that. With limited trade capital it’s going to be fascinating to see where Preller places priority.