The Padres Bet the House on Their Bullpen Superstars—and Lost Big

If you're going to lose a playoff game, you'd just as soon it be a blowout. There's a bit less of a mental hurdle to clear after that kind of (no-)contest; players and coaches are used to flushing crummy games and moving on. Besides, when you get your doors blown off, you always learn something valuable (who you can and can't trust with the ball the next time their spot in the rotation swings around; what defensive weakness you can no longer afford to accept in the name of finding more offense; who's so hot on the other side that you should gameplan around not letting them beat you)—and you hardly ever have to use your top relievers. That one is especially key.

If you're going to lose a close playoff game, you want it to be one where you were chasing the game the whole time. Again, good odds say you didn't use your very best relievers to get to that point, but even if you did, you probably didn't push them especially hard. Meanwhile, the other side probably used everyone, if you kept the pressure on properly. You probably weakened them. You probably drew blood, even though you weren't able to complete the kill. Ok. That's a shame, but unless that game sent you home, there's a tomorrow to which to look forward. There's a new hunt on which to embark, and you feel like you'll bag your quarry this time.

If you're going to lose a close playoff game wherein you had the lead most of the way, you want it to be one where your starter went deep and you got beat by a lightning strike—a fast sequence that flipped the scoreboard but didn't wear down your relief ace(s), or give the other side many looks at them. The more arrows you fire when you sense the opportunity, the fewer you'll have left if your belly is still empty the next day.

The Padres head back to San Diego at DEFCON 1, because they just lost two games in a row in the very worst way possible: after holding the lead, and using their 'A' bullpen (not that they have a 'B' bullpen right now, anyway), and letting their opponents see everything those guys will try to do. It's as dire a situation as a team can encounter, except in that the series now shifts to Petco Park, where the fans will be ready to try to keep the team's season alive by being rowdier than ever. Unfortunately, it might not matter. Despite two low-scoring games in a row, it suddenly feels like the Padres don't have the pitching to go any further this fall.

To the surprise of some, the team elected to roster only 11 pitchers for this series. Even in placing Walker Buehler on the postseason version of the paternity list, they designated Randy Vásquez as the player replacing him, so when Buehler is (presumably) reinstated Tuesday, they'll stay at 11 hurlers and 15 position players. In a best-of-5 series with two off days, that should be enough arms, but the unusual roster construction caught the attention of many fans and pundits. Was it a bold, innovative strategy? Not really. It was just an admission: the Padres don't have 12 pitchers they'd have any idea how to use.

In his first season as a big-league manager, Craig Stammen was an activist. Down the stretch, he had a fairly stable starting rotation, but he only ever trusted Michael King and Nick Pivetta. In starts made by Buehler, Vásquez, Robbie Ray, Casey Mize, Griffin Canning, Germán Márquez, JP Sears and others, he was downright antsy—and with good reason. Of that group, only Ray ever gave him anything to trust. Even fellow trade acquisition Mize became (literally) wobbly after the ankle sprain he suffered in August, which he ill-advisedly tried to pitch through for five more weeks.

Stammen also didn't show a great deal of imagination, though, or a deft touch when it came to playing matchups. He had a push-button bullpen at his disposal, and he mostly pushed the right buttons, but when it wasn't clear what he should do, it seemed like he rarely did the right thing. The front office's uneasiness with Stammen's bullpen management (however unspoken) became one factor in shaping the team's roster for this series. The lack of really good options available to them became another.

Of the pitchers left off the NLDS roster, the only one who had a (superficially) strong case to be there is Wandy Peralta. The lefty pitched 65 times this year for Stammen, compiling 77 1/3 innings. His appearances were spangled across games like stars across the sky:

• Eight appearances in the fourth inning or earlier, including five "starts" as an opener
• Eight more appearances in the fifth
• 12 in the sixth
• 14 in the seventh
• 17 in the eighth
• 6 in the ninth

His ERA (3.61) suggests he performed that versatile duty well. But Peralta lost Stammen's trust early, and never really reclaimed it. He had two poor outings in late-game, high-leverage relief within the first fortnight of the season and never returned to regular work in that role. The mistrust was not entirely misplaced, either; Peralta's 16% strikeout rate is too low for a reliever without elite control or a sky-high ground-ball rate.

Peralta remained Stammen's handy emergency arm for most of the year, but in the playoffs, the team seems to have reasoned, you're going to turn to your top guys in those early and mid-game emergencies, so why bother? Unfortunately, the last two games have given some examples of why.

Here's a table showing how many times each Padres pitcher has faced each Brewers batter, through two games of the series.

Managing a playoff series is a balancing act. You want to exploit matchups you've identified as favorable, but you don't want to overexpose them. A good rule of thumb is to avoid letting any opposing batter see a pitcher for a third time in a best-of-5, unless the pitcher is so good or the leverage is so low that familiarity truly becomes a minor consideration.

Because of the way Stammen ran each game and the roster A.J. Preller gave him, the Brewers' top left-handed bats (Jake Bauers and Brice Turang) have each already seen Yuki Matsui twice. Garrett Mitchell and Sal Frelick have already seen him once, and William Contreras (a righty bat who's liable to light up a lefty like Matsui, as he proved against the other key lefty in the San Diego pen in Game 1) has seen him twice, too. Meanwhile, the entire Brewers lineup got their first look at Adrian Morejon in Game 1, including three (Luis Lara, Mitchell and Joey Ortiz) in the eighth inning, after Morejon had given up the go-ahead run on a Contreras homer in the seventh. 

Unnecessary exposure kills you in series like this. Stammen should have turned to David Morgan or Joe Musgrove for the eighth inning of that game, because if the Padres are to come back and win now, they'll almost certainly need Morejon for two more huge appearances, and a second or third look at him might make the difference between an out and a hit for an otherwise overmatched Milwaukee batter. Morgan and Musgrove don't have much of the skipper's trust, either, though, because of wildness (Morgan) and the inherent uncertainty of a very recent return after a long, long injury layoff (Musgrove). Peralta would have fit perfectly into that spot in Game 1.

Worse than any of that, of course, is that the Padres not only lost Game 1 because Morejon ran into Contreras's barrel, but lost Game 2 in a way that could compromise Mason Miller even for Game 3. Miller threw 40 pitches in a grueling two-inning appearance, trying to gut out a save that would have shifted the momentum of the series. The momentum shifted, all right, but in Milwaukee's favor. Miller has a day to recover, but he's surely only available for one inning in Game 3, and he might not be his best self, even then. Morejon will be fully rested and ready, but again, San Diego has to win three games in a row now. They probably can't afford for Morejon to go multiple innings in the first of the three.

Bradgley Rodríguez has also been used twice already, though given the way each of the Padres' starters' appearances went, that was probably unavoidable. He's worked mostly against the bottom of the Milwaukee lineup, so he could be in line to face the heart of the order the next time he's needed. He's already faced Jackson Chourio twice, though, which is a problem. He'll need to be shielded from a third matchup with Milwaukee's postseason Superman. If he isn't, it's likely to end badly.

Having your backs to the wall after two road games in a best-of-5 isn't an unusual position. Lots of teams get here. Few of them take as much psychological damage as the Padres did over the weekend, though, and fewer still face the logistical problems the team's roster construction has introduced. If they come back and win this series, it will be the latest and greatest chapter of the team's current Golden Age. If they don't, there will be legitimate questions both about Stammen's management of the pitching staff and about the front office's failure to amass enough reliable depth for the manager to have done things any better.

Do you approve of the job Craig Stammen is doing as Padres manager?

Do you approve of the job Craig Stammen is doing as Padres manager?

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