Randy Vásquez's 2026 Debut Laid the Foundation For A Much-Needed Breakout

Things haven’t gotten off to the best of starts for the San Diego Padres in 2026. Some of the offensive questions and rotation uncertainty have manifested for the worst. In the team’s first win of the season, however, one of the more intriguing parts of the roster has already emerged as a potential answer to one of those problems.

On the whole, there wasn’t a lot about Randy Vásquez’s 2025 that would impress the average observer. His percentile distribution offered very little by which to be encouraged: 

That he was below average in nearly every notable pitching metric speaks to the struggles he endured for much of last season. He was largely unable to get hitters out by way of the strikeout while simultaneously navigating consistently shaky command. The only even moderately positive takeaway could be found in his ability to minimize hard contact (and even then, he was more mid-tier in doing so than actually good at it). 

But the way in which Vásquez finished the season offered something more optimistic than the prior months that had come before. After pitching to a 3.80 ERA but 5.37 FIP (and a .318 opposing wOBA) in the first half, Vásquez bottomed-out across 7.2 innings in August, wherein he allowed seven runs and a .372 opposing wOBA. There were some encouraging signs in that small sample, though, as he posted a 21.2 percent strikeout rate and 3.0 percent walk rate. As such, September began to represent a very different story for him. 

That month, Vásquez tossed 22.1 innings to a 3.22 ERA, 3.00 FIP, and a .260 opposing wOBA. His strikeout rate was technically at its highest in an individual month (21.3 percent), while his walk rate remained low across a larger body of work (3.4 percent). Most importantly, his arsenal began to showcase signs of evolution. At 93.2 MPH, his average fastball velocity peaked late in the season, and he had more spin on his sweeper than in any month prior. The results include far more chases outside the zone, which helped to sustain the strikeout rate of August and led to a groundball rate over 52 percent. 

Between that and a spring exhibition season that indicated another jump in velocity (95.6 MPH average on the four-seam), there was plenty of optimism that Vásquez could not only latch onto one of the vacant spots in the starting five but solidify himself as a legitimate mid-rotation arm as the season wore on. And while we’re only one start into his 2026 campaign, it’s certainly looking like that could come to fruition. 

Here’s the breakdown of his first start: 

Even within just one start, there’s a lot to be encouraged by here. The fastball velocity speaks for itself. That continues to be an area of improvement, which should serve as a nice springboard moving forward. But the enhanced effectiveness of the stuff is an equally important development. Each of the whiffs and the CSW% reflected in the above are miles above what Vásquez had turned in virtually across the board in 2025, to say nothing of zone expansion he coaxed out of opposing hitters.

One of the issues that Vásquez had last year was his inability to generate swings outside the zone. Hitters didn’t chase, which tamps down whiffs and inhibits one’s ability to get strikeouts. As a result, Vásquez was forced to try and work the edges of the zone which, more often than not, were reflected in a lack of strikeouts and a ballooned walk rate. In his first start, though, he was generating chases 45 percent of the time with his four-seamer, 40 percent of the time with his curveball, and 33 percent of the time with his sweeper (the latter of which are probably the same pitch taking on a different shape and resulting in a different classification). Last year, Vásquez didn’t reach a 30 percent chase rate until the middle of May, and it took another month before he touched the rate that he posted in his first start of 2026. 

When you compound a newfound ability to avoid the heart of the plate with the improvement in raw stuff, then there is good reason to be optimistic about what Randy Vásquez can provide the Padres this season. He’s never going to develop into an elite pitcher, but the combination of a mid-90s fastball, strong pitch diversity, and a genuine out-pitch (his sweeper) offers a combination that can evolve into real mid-rotation stability for a team that has none to speak of. Now, he needs to prove capable of replicating these results in future outings.