Opportunity Costs

The Padres followed up a 2-1 series win against the Marlins with a 2-1 series win against the Royals this weekend. Each series featured the Padres winning the first two games before ignominiously losing the third. The good news is that two steps forward and one step back across an entire season is a 108-54 record. The bad news is the Padres are not going to do that across the remaining 100 games. There are going to be series losses, inevitably. And it’s why losing the way they did Sunday, blowing a two run lead with closer Robert Suarez unavailable, was particularly frustrating. While the 4-2 record the past two series is undeniably good, new challenges for the Padres are coming into clear focus.

Mop Up Mayhem

The Royals series started Friday with what appeared to be an easy win after Padres hitters put up 11 hits in the eighth inning - a franchise record - on the way to an 11-3 lead entering the ninth inning. Stephen Kolek was brought in to finish the ninth inning. This is strategically the right move as only mop up duty was required to secure a win, and the Padres high leverage arms have been heavily taxed recently. It didn’t work. Kolek gave up five earned runs on hard contact:

Kolek’s disastrous ninth forced a move to Robert Suarez when the outing became a save situation. Suarez logged six pitches en route to his 16th save of the season. But it should be noted that his effective workload was likely more than this as he had to warm up twice: first in the eighth inning when the Padres took a narrow lead, and again in ninth when Kolek couldn’t hold the enormous lead. The Padres missed an opportunity for a night of rest for their closer.

Injuries Mounting

On Saturday the Padres announced that Joe Musgrove was headed back to the IL along with Yu Darvish. Two of the Padres starters going down creates an enormous number of innings that must be covered. Musgrove’s injury is essentially an aggravation of the same right elbow injury that landed him on the IL in early May. He cannot seem to string together starts without developing pain in the right elbow, and that often carries a grave prognosis. Darvish’s injury was a left groin strain, distinct from the neck strain that led to an IL stint in April. It’s hard to pick which is the more grim narrative: the lingering elbow injury, or the 37 year old with multiple IL stints for unrelated injuries. The bottom line is that the odds the Padres need to dip into their minor league starting pitching pool are increased, as are the odds they’ll need to go with an ‘opener’ strategy and lean hard on the bullpen to finish out multiple innings frequently. This is going to be the key short term challenge for the Padres. And depending on the ultimate prognosis for Darvish and Musgrove, may become a season defining challenge.

Saturday the Padres addressed the sudden starting pitching shortage with an emergency start from Randy Vasquez. Vasquez performed adequately pitching five innings and giving up three earned runs. The Padres got nice outings from Adrian Morejon, Jeremiah Estrada, and Wandy Peralta to keep a Padres 7-3 lead intact into the ninth. With a four run lead Mike Shildt opted to pitch Robert Suarez in back to back games to secure the series win. Suarez took 18 pitches to close the door on the Royals.

The Test

In the final game on Sunday Michael King pitched seven innings of one run ball and the Padres bats strung together enough hits to take a 3-1 lead into the ninth. Suarez and Estrada (who needed 32 pitches to complete his outing Saturday) were deemed unavailable and Yuki Matsui was given the save opportunity. After a single to Vinnie Pasquantino and a walk to Salvador Perez he allowed a two run triple to Nelson Velazquez. Nick Loftin followed up with a perfect piece of situational hitting, lofting a fly ball into right field which scored Velazquez on a sac fly to win the game. A key sequence to analyze was the walk to Perez. Matsui went up 0-2 to Perez before throwing three straight noncompetitive pitches. After Perez fouled off a splitter low in the zone Matsui walked him with a noncompetitive four seamer way out of the zone. Here’s the entire sequence:

Some of those pitches were a foot off the plate. This has been a theme with Matsui, here’s his pitch scatter chart from Baseball Savant:

Overall he’s pitched only 45.7% of his pitches in the strike zone, well below the major league average of 48.6%. Normally that’s the profile of a pitcher struggling with control. Here’s the thing, though, struggling with control might not be the explanation. We don’t have pitch scatters for Matsui from his time in the NPB but the stats show an excellent strikeout/walk ratio each of the past two seasons, 5.54 and 4.37. For reference the MLB average is 2.67. This season Matsui sits at 1.33. He has a ridiculous walk rate of 5.33 BB/9IP which would have led MLB last season. The question is, did he suddenly lose the ability to throw his pitches for strikes? Or is he nibbling, afraid to throw strikes for fear of what MLB hitters will do? It’s hard to know. Hitters have not squared him up particularly well. Entering Sunday his expected wOBA on contact was .317, a mark which ranked among the best 10% of pitchers in the league. But it’s fair to wonder if that’s a byproduct of just never pitching in the zone. Regardless of the explanation, through the first third of the season Matsui has not been the reliable high leverage arm they hoped. After the game many drew a straight line from Kolek’s disastrous Friday outing to Matsui being forced in to a save situation Sunday. The truth is the team gave Matsui a 5-year $28 million contract based on the idea he could handle that assignment, and they were eventually going to test him.

Matsui is being paid like a true asset, and needs to be able to protect a two run lead. Still, the blame here is partly on Kolek. Kolek has to be able to protect an eight run lead. And after Kolek’s implosion Friday many wondered why he is still being given a roster spot. The likely explanation has two parts. First, Kolek is a rule V pick which means the Padres must have him clear waivers in order to send him to the minors; if they want to send him down they have to ‘risk’ another team claiming him. This means the team is going to have a higher threshold for sending him down than they would a player with available minor league options. The second part is that the Padres are still headed by AJ Preller who is a scout at heart, and Kolek, despite awful results so far, does seem to have two major league quality pitches. His sweeper grades out well above average by Fangraphs stuff+, and his sinker grades out at least average. The rest of his arsenal (Cutter, Four Seamer, and Changeup) grade out below average to well below average. Which is why it’s interesting to look at what he’s actually thrown:

He completely abandons his sweeper to left handers and replaces it with an increase in changeups and cutters. This means overall he’s throwing his two MLB quality pitches about ~60% the time and his three below average pitches almost 40% of the time. During his season worst outing Friday he moved even further away from his best pitches:

During his implosion he threw his best graded pitch once and his worst three pitches made up 58.3% of his total offerings. Kolek was drafted as a starting pitcher and never found success in the minors, but the Mariners converted him to a reliever last year and he was effective across 69.1 combined innings in AA and AAA including numerous outings in which he went two innings or more. In all likelihood the Padres hoped he could be a long reliever with with the ability to pitch multiple innings at the major league level, a real asset, and one in which a wider pitch mix is valuable. But it hasn’t gone well. As pitching injuries accrue the opportunity cost of occupying a roster spot with an experiment is leveraged upwards. It’s probably time to accelerate the timeline of that experiment and find out if he can be an effective short reliever, which doesn’t require a five pitch mix, and get hitters out with the sinker/sweeper combo. Preller and the Padres need to see if his best stuff plays, because if it doesn’t, the rest is moot. Outings where he barely throws his best pitches don’t help solve that mystery.

Hoping For The Best

Perhaps the most alarming development Sunday was an injury to Luis Arraez who appeared to jam his right shoulder on a slide into second base. He stayed in the following inning but eventually left the game. Part of the value in trading for Arraez came from the trade being consummated in May, allowing Arraez’ positional versatility to provide a safety net against an injury to the infield. Indeed, when Xander Bogaerts went out with a shoulder injury the Padres hardly missed a beat. An injury to Arraez would be much harder to weather given the shallow depth behind him. After the game he told the media “I’ll be playing tomorrow.” We’re hoping for the best.

Opportunity Costs

The weekend drew two opportunity costs into stark relief: if the Padres cannot count on having multiple high leverage arms behind Suarez, they are going to incur a higher opportunity cost when using Robert Suarez in non-save situations. And if they’re going to be leaning more heavily on the bullpen to eat innings with two of their starters down with injury, they need to assign a higher opportunity cost to giving a roster spot to a developmental experiment in Kolek.

Pyrrhic Victory

The loss on Sunday can trace its genesis to decisions made in each of the two previous games. Along with the devastating injury news to the starting rotation, and the scary moment with Luis Arraez, it gave the series win the feel of a Pyrrhic Victory. This isn’t to say that the decision to use Suarez in Friday and Saturday’s games was wrong, or that Darvish or Musgrove should have been shut down sooner. It’s just to highlight how thin the margins remain. A series win on the road against a very good team is a real accomplishment. But the biggest takeaway from the weekend, as if we needed any more reminders, is that nothing is going to be easy as the Padres try to survive the regular season gauntlet.