San Diego Padres Pitcher Of The Month: March & April

[Randy Holt]

Unlike the hitting side of things, there's a number of arms we can acknowledge as the March/April Pitcher of the Month for the San Diego Padres. While the positional side has been decimated by injuries, the pitching staff has held it together. It hasn't been perfect (given some struggles in the rotation), but it's been a top 10 staff in all of baseball by most measures. 

With those aforementioned rotation issues in mind — the optioning of Kyle Hart, Michael King's efficiency, and Dylan Cease's start-to-start variance as examples — the key to the staff has been the Padres' late-inning combination of Jeremiah Estrada, Jason Adam, and Robert Suárez. 

Estrada is off to the best start of his career (1.32 ERA) largely thanks to the flip in his second offering from last year's slider to this year's "chitter." He's generating chase at a rate in the 95th percentile (37.0 percent) and getting punchouts in the 89th (31.4). Adam has been only slightly worse less excellent in the whiff game, but he's off to a 0.60 ERA start in which he hasn't allowed a single barrel. Suárez has been Suárez, incorporating the changeup quite a bit more in order to gain a rise in strikeout rate. 

They're hardly the only examples from the San Diego 'pen, however. Alek Jacob has been quite good across 15 innings of work. Adrian Morejón continues to look like one of the game's best middle relievers, with an arsenal that leaves him capable of being dropped into any given situation over the course of nine innings. The team not only has the chops to close out games efficiently, but a bridge to get them there. 

Our Pitcher of the Month for March & April, though, comes out of the rotation. And even though he signed on at the end of February, Nick Pivetta has been the team's most important pitcher through the first month-or-so of the 2025 season. 

Following a 2023 as a swingman and a 2024 that featured a 4.14 ERA as a full-time starter in Boston, Pivetta came in as one of the team's only Major League signings from this past winter. And while there are no shortage of reasons to believe that the regression monster could creep up behind him at any second, the efficiency and stability Pivetta has provided in the rotation thus far has been paramount for the Padres. 

The surface numbers are outstanding. Pivetta's pitched to a 1.20 ERA & 2.20 FIP through his first five starts, averaging six innings per start. He's gone seven innings in three of those five outings. The strikeout rate is down a touch (27.0 percent), but the walk rate has remained just about the same (the 6.3 percent rate is actually down on a per-inning basis). 

I mentioned regression. Pivetta has allowed a .205 BABIP and is stranding roughly 88 percent of runners. His barrel rate is living in just the 36th percentile (9.5 percent), and his groundball rate remains low (around 35 percent). His spike in sinker usage (and subsequent outcomes) should help him to remain largely efficient, but we have every reason to think that there's at least some level of regression on the horizon. Luckily, the team has the horses behind him to minimize the effects. 

That's a concern for another day, though. The Padres have needed every bit of the efficiency he's provided out of the rotation thus far. Dylan Cease has only worked past the fifth inning twice. Michael King has lacked a certain efficiency throughout his starts, despite the overall quality (which remains high). Dylan Cease has only worked past the fifth inning twice. Kyle Hart's already in El Paso. Yu Darvish and Matt Waldron remain on the IL. Regression — and the excellence of the relief corps — be damned, Nick Pivetta has been the team's most important pitcher through a month-and-change of 2025. 

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