San Diego Padres Pitchers Of The Month - May 2025

[Artur Ivanov]

The Padres' bullpen significantly regressed in May, posting a combined ERA of 5.36, compared to 1.77 in March and April. What once seemed like the team's strength has now become a bit of a question mark, as the group has given up several leads throughout the month and experienced several significant setbacks. 

The starting pitching stayed roughly the same, but with the injury to Michael King and the uncertainty of Yu Darvish’s return, the Padres’ starting pitching staff will be tested in the coming weeks. The team may need more starts from pitchers like Steven Kolek and Kyle Hart, and the daunting June schedule may prove to be a challenge for the group.

Despite the downer month, there were still several bright spots for the Padres’ arms for both the starters and the bullpen. 

A couple of honorable mentions will go to starter Dylan Cease and reliever Jason Adam.

Cease has been more like himself in May and has seen a significant improvement since his rough start to the season. His biggest improvement was cutting down the base traffic. He cut his WHIP down significantly since the previous month, going from a 1.62 to a 1.00, and opponents hit a cool .208 off of him. His 3.71 May ERA was a full two runs lower than his March/April ERA.

However, Cease ended the month with a poor start against the Pirates on May 31, going just 4.2 innings and allowing three earned runs. He is also having trouble keeping the ball in the ballpark, allowing five home runs in May, and his Barrel% remains the highest of his career thus far at 11%. If Cease can limit the damage to solo home runs and avoid hard contact, he’ll continue to keep the Padres in games and get completely back on track. 

The emergence of Cease is also well-timed, as it is uncertain how long King and Darvish will remain injured. The Padres will need Cease to continue to improve and be a reliable starter while the two remain on the IL.

Despite recent control issues, Jason Adam still had an impressive month of May and was one of the lone bright spots during a rough bullpen stretch. He led relievers with a 1.64 ERA in 11 innings pitched. In his 12 appearances out of the pen, Adam allowed just two earned runs while striking out eight in the process.

While still certainly a good month, Adam ended it on a sour note, relinquishing the lead against Miami, where he allowed two unearned runs to score off three hits. His next time out against the Pirates, he walked two batters in ⅔ of an inning. Speaking of walks, Adam walked six batters in May, which was the third most among the Padres' relievers. These few hiccups, along with blowing a two-run lead to the Yankees earlier in the month, allowed for a different Padres reliever to win the reliever of the month award instead.

While Cease and Adam were certainly great candidates for the pitchers of the month, two other pitchers arguably had a better May.

Those pitchers were Randy Vasquez and Jeremiah Estrada. 

Vasquez has been the Houdini of pitchers since the start of the season. He can make baserunners disappear with the snap of a finger. While the underlying stats don’t favor Vasquez’s disappearing baserunners trick, the Padres have certainly benefited from it over the last month.

Vasquez has quietly given the Padres valuable innings over the last month. His numbers won’t jump off the page like a pitcher of King or Cease’s caliber would. Still, with pitching injuries and the uncertainty of the starting pitching depth, Vasquez has been the most reliable pitcher outside of Nick Pivetta.

In May, he threw 28 innings to the tune of a 2.89 ERA, the lowest starter ERA during the month. While Vasquez’s WHIP remained relatively high at 1.21, he cut down on the walks, his Achilles heel. He only walked a total of eight batters in May, five of which came in one game. As a result, cut his walk numbers in half from the total he had up to that point and vastly improved his SO/BB ratio from a .53 to a 2.75 in that same time frame. 

Vasquez has done an excellent job of keeping the Padres in games, especially in May. He pitched at least five innings in 4/5 of his starts and didn’t give up more than three earned runs in any of those appearances. As a result, the team won four of his May starts. 

His knack of escaping jams and limiting damage when multiple runners are on base has been puzzling, to say the least. The most egregious of which came on May 5, where the Padres won 2-1 against Pittsburgh in a game where Vasquez gave up six hits and five walks in five innings but managed to give up just one run. Since that start, however, Vasquez has been significantly better, with his best outing coming on May 14 against the Angels, where he went six innings of one-run baseball, allowing just one walk and four hits. 

Vasquez’s ability to escape major damage has been remarkable, but pretty soon, he may be more like Icarus than Houdini. Vasquez’s 4.95 FIP suggests that he should be giving up more than 1.5 more earned runs per nine than he currently is with the way he’s pitching. Eventually, putting runners on base at the rate Vasquez has been can lead to blow-up starts and shortened outings. Vasquez’s career SO/9 of 6.0 means he pitches to contact, and this can be troublesome if he constantly has runners on base and in scoring position. Still, Vasquez’s totals in May are significantly better than in the past, and he seems to be improving as the season progresses. His innings have been invaluable to a Padres team desperate for quality pitching innings as of late.

For the bullpen, we turn to a completely different type of pitcher with Jeremiah Estrada. 

Estrada struck out twice as many batters as he pitched innings. His 20 strikeouts in May rank first out of all Padres relievers and fifth out of the entire pitching staff. He ranked third on the team in ERA during May out of the pitchers who pitched at least 10 innings. Estrada also picked up his second career save on a night when Suarez was unavailable. Estrada’s save came in the four-out variety, locking up an 8-6 comeback win against the Marlins.  

Estrada’s splitter, or what he calls his “chitter”, has continued to be one of the top pitches in all of MLB this season. Opponents are hitting just .050 against the pitch, and it has accounted for 13 of his strikeouts this season. This pitch has helped elevate Estrada into one of the top setup men in MLB.

In a month where the Padres have been snake bitten by poor relief appearances, Estrada remained consistent and helped the team maintain their lead in most of the games he’s appeared in. His ability to strike out most of the batters he faces remains a key asset to the team and has helped him earn the relief pitcher of the month honors.

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