Randy Vásquez Is Taking One Step Forward, One Step Back In 2025

One of the more impressive feats that the San Diego Padres have been able to pull off in 2025 is within their rotation. Already a starting group that lacked depth, injuries (both new and pre-existing) have led Mike Shildt to cobble together a rotation as best he could. And, somehow, it's hung in there halfway through the season. 

As of this writing, the Padres sit in the top half of the league in ERA (3.92), FIP (4.02), and strikeout rate (22.6 percent). That's made all the more impressive considering the group is currently rolling without Michael King and has yet to see a start from Yu Darvish. Perhaps more impressively is that they're doing all of that with the start-to-start variance of one Randy Vásquez. 

Acquired from the New York Yankees as a part of the Juan Soto trade, Vásquez struggled quite a bit across 20 starts last year, with both an ERA and a FIP that lingered around five. The spring absence of Darvish and Matt Waldron pressed him into rotation duty at the top level to start the year. And through 17 starts, he's managed to hang onto the job despite some abbreviated outings wrought by questionable command. 

It's the command that's been the issue for Vásquez throughout the year. Already without strikeout stuff (13.1 K%), his 10.7 percent walk rate is one of the five highest among qualifying starting pitchers. And it's not just about walking hitters, either. It's about sustained plate appearances which begets high pitch counts which begets short outings; eight of Vásquez's 17 starts have gone fewer than five innings. 

The good news is that he's started to figure out some of the command stuff: 

That he's been able to drive up the Zone% steadily speaks to the fact that he's been working around it more frequently. It's been an imperfect process, but the walk rates from the first three months of the year read as follows: 15.6 percent in March/April, 6.8 percent in May, and 9.4 percent in June. You'd obviously like to see a continuation of the improvement that you saw between the season's first two months, but the fact that there's still a steep drop from the season's opening month reads as encouraging. 

Instead, the frustration with Vásquez has evolved into a something of a new issue revolving around his pitch selection: 

Now, obviously, part of the nature of being a starting pitcher is varying your usage depending on the opponent and what your feel may be on a given day. But, the distribution for Vásquez is an absolute mess. Even his cutter, which has been the primary pitch all year, has taken a back seat in more recent outings. Given that he was able to (somewhat) rein in the command woes, you'd expect this to look at least a little bit cleaner. Instead, this is indicative of a guy who is still trying to determine what his best offerings may be. 

When that's the case, you get a start like Vásquez had against the Cincinnati Reds last weekend. A few bloop hits were among the nine he surrendered against only two walks. The high hit volume put him in an early hole in allowing four earned runs across just 4 1/3 innings of work. When your command isn't pristine (something we should never expected from Vásquez) and you're uncomfortable with your usage, hitters aren't going to know what's coming. With Vásquez actually improving his command, that led to more swings than we might otherwise see which, in turn, led to additional hits that likely could have been avoided. But, without upper-tier stuff, that's going to be a byproduct of this process for Vásquez. He's harnessing his stuff but only on an in-between sort of level given the usage mess.

For what it's worth, it does seem like there's an ideal mix for Vásquez, as indicated by his outcomes to date: 

By these metrics, the cutter, sinker, and sweeper have been Vásquez's most important offerings this year. The cutter for the whiff and stability it provides, the sinker that induces groundballs to pin down opposing averages, and the sweeper as a lone putaway offering. And it should probably come in that order to if we're thinking about standard sequencing. Utilize the cutter to get ahead before turning to the sinker and sweeper as your out pitches in different ways. Even if it's a different sequence, some logic in the distribution appears necessary for Vásquez to start stringing together a level of consistency that we haven't seen yet. 

Getting the command on track was obviously an important step. Now, it's about taking that improved command and spinning it into a steady arsenal that Vásquez can feel comfortable with start to start. Only then might we start seeing some level of stability and, thus, a step toward him realizing his value within this San Diego Padres rotation.