Randy Holt

There was a time when a first start of the season coming against the Chicago White Sox would've represented as soft a landing as possible. But with the San Diego Padres having dropped the first two of three against a Sox team that has been surging over the past week, Griffin Canning didn't quite get the calm welcome of a bad team standing opposed to him. Nevertheless, he managed. Sunday afternoon was Canning's first start in a Padres uniform after signing a one-year deal late in the offseason. After working through five rehab starts following last year's Achilles injury, it was an opportunity for the team to get someone else in the mix given the struggles of the Walker Buehler, Germán Márquez, Matt Waldron contingent in the latter portion of the starting five. If Canning's first start was any indication, some of that trio could be on the outs in fairly short order. Canning worked five innings (73 pitches), allowing three hits and three walks while striking out seven. He allowed one run on a Drew Romo solo homer, but did enough to leave with the lead (which was later surrendered by Adrian Morejon). Craig Stammen was intentional with how he used the deployed the newest Friars starter, limiting both his pitch count and his amount of turns through the order. Canning, for his money, was smart about usage, too. The changeup was his most frequently used pitched of the afternoon (40 percent) with the four-seam following it up at 34 percent (his slider/sweeper comprised the rest of his distribution). The first time through the order, though, Canning was heavy on the four-seamer (48 percent) before pivoting to the off-speed (47 percent) & breaking (26 percent) pitches more the second time through. Here is how things broke down for Canning in the start: The stuff played, to be sure. Canning was able to generate consistent whiffs with all three pitches and generated a fair bit of chase with the changeup and slider. The former was particularly effective given the volume of its usage and the raw number of whiffs he was able to garner with it. The location breakdown also offered reason for optimism surrounding his presence in the rotation: The fastball worked up, the changeup primarily worked down, and the slider moved around horizontally. For a starting pitcher making his first start of the season against a team on a bit of a run, it's not a bad looking distribution. If this is the version of Canning that the Padres are going to get moving forward, then he's absolutely someone who can offer the stability that the back end of the rotation has lacked. As easy as it may be to remember Canning as the starter who never realized his potential with the Los Angeles Angels, it's also easy to forget that he was beginning to break out with the New York Mets in 2025. In 16 starts, he'd posted a 3.77 ERA, a solid whiff rate, and an elite groundball rate. If he's going to simplify the arsenal so that his changeup and slider — pitches which have graded out as his best in his career by Stuff+ — are his primary offerings to play off the four-seam, then there's reason to think he could build on that small sample from Queens. At the same time, it's only one start. The Padres have had a tough time stabilizing their rotation with the volume approach. With Canning now in the mix and Lucas Giolito on the way, the former's first start is as good a reason as any in recent weeks for some optimism on that front. View full article

As of the end of April, there was exactly one hitter in Major League Baseball hitting the ball hard at a higher rate than Fernando Tatis Jr. And even James Woods’ 64.8 Hard-Hit% just narrowly edges the 64.7 percent rate at which the San Diego Padres' right fielder is working with thus far. In the grand scheme of the stat sheet, it hasn’t seemed to matter, however. Despite the quality of contact being made, Tatis has yet to find the statistical backing that would typically accompany such an impressive hard contact rate. To close out the month, his slash read a mere .250/.323/.286 with a 77 wRC+. Not a single piece of that hard contact has found its way over an outfield wall to date, with Tatis sitting well over 200 days since his last home run. His slugging percentage is the third-worst on the team, with a .036 ISO that trails every position player currently on the roster. Of course, the why of his power outage isn’t a mystery; Tatis simply is not lifting the ball. His average launch angle is 3.2. His 6° average attack angle is a two-degree dip from last season and a four-degree decrease from 2024. Those are each a factor in an ideal attack angle rate of only 51.3 percent. That’s five percent lower than last season. Additionally, he’s working with a fly-ball rate that sits six points below his career average (28.6), which looks even worse to the pull side (PullAIR% of just 5.9). The plane of his swing is simply too flat to generate any impact. More lift juxtaposed against the type of contact Tatis is making would, undoubtedly, lead to a massive outburst of production. Whether there’s a way out of this kind of spiral in which he’s currently mired, however, is a much less certain concept. Don’t get it twisted, the swing path is the issue. The extreme shallow nature of it is a problem. Navigating any other causes almost feel fruitless given the extremes we're talking about. Nevertheless, there are a couple of other areas worth investigating to see if he could tap into some power in a different way. It’s possible that there’s something in his lower half that is stifling the power, too. This is his stance on a home run against the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2025: And here’s a swing from the team’s series against the Chicago Cubs this week: The result of the latter was a sharp single. One could perhaps make the argument that there’s more weight on his backside in the first swing that could yield more power than the one in the second. But it’s also not so severe that we’d expect that Tatis would feel compelled to evaluate the footwork components of his mechanics. Ultimately, the plane of the swing is going to come far more from the hands than anything the lower half might force it into. Maybe there’s an issue within his mastery of the zone? Even a long swing like the one Tatis utilizes might be susceptible to shallower contact if he’s being too aggressive on pitches in the lower portions of the zone that don’t lend themselves to fly-ball contact. Yet again, though, we’re faced with an absence of explanation beyond anything other than the preeminent conclusion: His approach to the zone is fine. The areas of the zone in which he’s been most active are those that should help to generate power. When he does expand the zone, it’s to the outer parts, which are closer to the barrel as part of his long (7.3 ft) swing. From a mechanical and from a zone standpoint, there isn’t anything outside of what we already know that reveals the root of the struggle. We may have one more idea, though. Tatis is swinging at more fastballs this season, reaching an equal rate with that of off-speed offerings (50.4 percent). Against those fastballs, he’s getting the ball in the air just 15.1 percent of the time. That’s a 10-point cut from 2025. His attack angle against fastballs is just 3°, with an ideal attack angle rate of only 40.9 percent. That’s nine percent lower than last season. There’s a compounding issue here. The plane of the bat is a problem on its own, but the fact that there’s an even larger exaggeration of woes there against fastballs — a pitch type against which he’s swinging at a higher rate than he did in 2025 — is indicative of something deeper. Despite the fact that Tatis is working with a fast swing speed, it feels as if he’s not in control at the plate. He’s swinging outside the zone more aggressively while also making less contact overall when he does. He’s getting quality contact because he’s hitting fastballs, but he’s doing so in a way that is more indicative of a player merely trying to put a ball in play rather than exert any impact in doing so. Does this mean there’s a psychological component at play that Tatis needs to get right before we can even begin to talk about the mechanical issues? It’s a situation that’s as fascinating as it is frustrating. The struggles of Fernando Tatis Jr. aren’t a mystery in matters of the box score. His swing is too flat. But it seems entirely possible that there are a host of other things happening that are less observable. Either way, the Padres are in need of sorting from their right fielder. As good as the offense has been at keeping them afloat in the early going, one can’t expect it to tread water for too long without their biggest driver contributing to the cause. View full article

As expected, the San Diego Padres have one of the best corps of relief pitchers in Major League Baseball. Their 4.15 ERA ranks surprisingly in the middle of the road, but a strikeout rate (23.1 percent) that sits in 11th place and an 9.1 percent walk rate that serves as the 12th-best mark in the league is more indicative of their talent. Their 53.4 percent groundball rate tops the league, and their 27.1 percent hard-hit rate is also in the top three. But it hasn’t all been perfect. Particularly in the matters of one Adrian Morejon. One of the issues that this bullpen faces is some misfortune in the batted ball game. Their .308 BABIP allowed to opposing hitters is one of the seven highest averages in the league, leaving a strand rate (70.5 percent) that’s floating more around the middle of the pack rather than what many of the other underlying figures might peg them to be. Morejon has been a sort of microcosm of these trends. Morejon’s surface numbers look rough. Through 16 innings of work, he’s pitched to a 5.63 ERA and a 55.6 percent strand rate. His 16.7 percent homer rate is abnormally high, too. Only Ron Marinaccio’s ERA sits higher, and Jeremiah Estrada (and his minuscule sample) is the only pitcher with a lower LOB% than Morejon (40.0). For a member of the contingent that was supposed to be the late-inning bridge to Mason Miller – alongside Estrada, Jason Adam, and, to a lesser extent, David Morgan – the output thus far has not been what you want. An observer who lives off the box score rather than a realistic portrayal might begin to have doubts about Morejon’s standing in the bullpen. Even at this early stage, the ERA alone is cause for concern. At this point, however, we know that ERA doesn’t tell the whole story, especially for a reliever. Interestingly, nor do any of the other factors through which Morejon is apparently struggling at present. This is Morejon’s percentile distribution through his 16 innings of work thus far: The xERA alone is indicative of a pitcher who doesn’t particularly deserved the results he’s received to this point (for what it’s worth, he also has a 2.74 FIP). He’s always lived in something of a paradox where the stuff is excellent and the whiffs are high, but the strikeouts are not. Morejon has furthered those trends throughout his small 2026 sample. Each of the chase and whiff rates look strong, with barrel, hard hit, and walk rates that are indicative of a pitcher who is in command of his stuff. It’s been more a matter of misfortune than anything. That misfortune works against Morejon both in strict outcomes (.354 BABIP) but also in the sample. Fourteen appearances comprise those 16 innings. On April 7 in Pittsburgh, Morejon allowed four runs in just one-third of an inning, with another two allowed against Colorado on April 10. Since that point, Morejon hasn’t allowed a run in six of eight appearances. He’s also struck out 12 hitters, walked only three, and hasn’t allowed a hit in five of those appearances. Suffice it to say, the version of Morejon that exists in reality is the one that was expected to lock down the late innings ahead of Miller. A pitcher with a combination of upper-tier stuff that induces plenty of whiff and the gaudy 65.3 percent groundball rate he’s posted thus far is one that is a nightmare for opposing hitters. If all hope is abandoned as an opposing hitter when Miller steps to the mound in the ninth, it’s not as if much room for optimism exists an inning or two earlier. That was the expectation coming into the year, and it remains reality. Regardless of what the ERA or other surface-level data may indicate, Morejon has been every bit as good as expected. Once the sample size grows, the numbers should easily illustrate such without the need for all of this extra analysis. View full article

It isn’t a surprise that, as we approach the end of April, the San Diego Padres find themselves in contention in a tough National League West. As of April 23, they’re tied with the Los Angeles Dodgers atop the division and two games ahead of the third-place Arizona Diamondbacks. There was always a certain degree of upside that existed with this team, despite an offseason that was predicated around the volume of additions rather than the quality of them. What is surprising, however, is how the Padres have managed to navigate their early schedule. Because it isn’t happening on the strength of the offense, where the star power exists on the roster. It’s coming from everywhere else. The Padres rank 23rd in the league in runs scored (100). They rank 18th in the league in batting average (.229), 25th in on-base percentage (.306), and 22nd in isolated power (.134). The collective is a below-average unit by a wRC+ that sits 23rd. Among lineup regulars, only Ramón Laureano and Xander Bogaerts sit comfortably above average by that latter category (each at 116). Beyond those two, it’s a lineup that doesn’t strike out a lot, but doesn’t do a whole lot else to drum up offense. Instead, the strength of this team lies in the other two phases of the game. They’re seventh in the league in whole staff ERA (3.43), second in strikeout rate (25.2 percent), 10th in walk rate (8.9 percent), and second in hard-hit rate (35.4 percent). The relief corps has been as good as advertised (3.06 ERA) while the starting staff has been better than expected (3.76 ERA). Defensively, the team ranks sixth in Fielding Run Value (8) and 10th in Defensive Runs Saved (also 8), indicating a group that is also better than might’ve been expected. Pitching and defense will get you places over the course of a baseball season. But you also have to score some runs in support of those two performance areas. Given some of those massive offensive shortcomings, is there anything they’re actually doing well in order to get enough runs across the plate in support of their two areas of success? The unfortunate answer to that is: not really. Each of the runners-on or runners-in-scoring-position scenarios are illustrative of a team struggling to find its offensive footing. And while the team ranks ninth in steals, they’re also decidedly average (ranked 17th) in baserunning value. The little bit of extra they’re getting in the swipes game may certainly help, but it’s not as if there’s a particular split or element on the margins that’s allowing them to score runs. This is just a matter of a team scraping across just as much as they need. Luckily for them, the pitching and defense have each been more than good enough to compensate. If there’s good news for the Padres, it’s that they’re performing a bit better than the actual outcomes may indicate. Their disappointing 21st-ranked batting average on balls in play is furthered by expected statistics that show that they should be at least somewhat better. Their xBA (.251) is 22 points higher than the actual figure, with a xSLG (.411) that is 48 points higher and a xwOBA (.327) that 25 points higher. They should be better. The process indicates that. Despite the fact that they’re not overly patient – indicated by a mid-tier walk rate and below-average pitches per plate appearance (3.89) – they’re making quality contact. They’re third in the league in Hard-Hit% (45.1) and 12th in Barrel% (8.4). That all comes with quite a bit of groundball contact (44.7 percent), though, which is likely feeding into some of their trouble finding fortune on balls in play. Nevertheless, this is a team with visibly better offensive chops than we’ve seen to date. Which is encouraging, because there’s a very fine threading of a needle taking place. In recent years, we’ve seen the pitching and the offense not quite link up for this team. One would falter while the other would succeed. This year, the two are a bit more in sync and matching up their quality performances on a given night. That’s not the kind of trend that carries over a full season, however. It should also be noted that outside of the regular performers, this isn’t a team built to sustain long-term defensive success. Also considering the composition of the starting staff, one imagines that some of these areas of success are going to dry up at some point during the summer, if not sooner. Is there an increased patience necessary here as the team tries to create their own luck? Or is it a matter of hoping things even out more naturally as the season progresses? Either way, the Padres better hope that one or the other manifests and yields some sort of offensive ascent, because this isn’t a team constructed to exist on the margins, regardless of what their early success may try and tell us. View full article

The San Diego Padres made perhaps the only noteworthy transaction remaining in early 2026 (non-trade division) in agreeing to a one-year deal with starting pitcher Lucas Giolito on Wednesday. In a vacuum, such a deal should be a welcome addition. There's also reality to consider, however. The Padres began the season with something of a patchwork rotation that has only been further depleted by the absence of Nick Pivetta and repeated setbacks in Joe Musgrove's return from Tommy John surgery. They'd already been hoping for rebounds from Germán Márquez and Walker Buehler and received mixed results from each. Matt Waldron was called back into service prior to last weekend. Griffin Canning remains on rehab assignment ahead of what will be an eventual debut at some point in the near future. With so much abstract in the picture, the fact that Giolito is a solid veteran with a track record that reads even more so should help to provide something a little more certain. At the same time, certain factors leave one to wonder where the realistic expectations fall. It's been a while since Giolito was at his height. He bookended the COVID year of 2020 with exceptional seasons in 2019 (5.2 fWAR) and 2021 (4.0 fWAR). He struggled in 2022, pitched for three teams in 2023, and had a 2024 that was entirely lost to injury. There was something of a rebound across 26 starts with the Boston Red Sox last year (2.0 fWAR), but the strikeouts were down, the walks were up, and he didn't pitch in the postseason because of an elbow issue. As such, any optimism over Giolito's addition to the mix is going to come on paper. When he's at his best, he's able to deploy his four-seam-slider-change combination to run up a fair bit of strikeouts (24.6 percent for his career). He can also eat innings effectively, averaging 5.6 innings per start in each of his last two seasons. In general then, you're looking at an arm that isn't exactly going to mow down opposing hitters, but can work efficiently enough to keep you in games and work deep enough into them. That's what the projection models are considering, too. Steamer, for example, has him at a 4.68 ERA, 20.6 K%, and 9.6 BB%. ZiPs is only slightly better at a 4.58 ERA, the same strikeout rate, and an 8.9 percent walk rate. Back in 2021, Giolito had two pitches (slider and change-up) that ranked above average by Stuff+. Now, it's only the change-up. The name of the game is stability, though. If Giolito can provide the Friars with that, then the signing is worthwhile regardless how the stat sheet shakes out. As an innings-eater, Giolito's presence alone forced ZiPS' playoff projections to increase for San Diego by 10 percent in the wake of signing the veteran. That's easily more than any other team with which he could have signed, with the Chicago Cubs' 8.1 percent increase falling in second. Even if he's not going to bring the swing-and-miss upside he was flashing on the South Side of Chicago a handful of years ago, he should be able to help fortify a unit that sits in the bottom half of the league in innings pitched by their starting pitchers (and sits among the league's worst in that regard over the past week). Reality for the Padres is not knowing what the timeline looks like for Pivetta or Musgrove. Michael King doesn't have the cleanest of histories in his own right, and each of Márquez and Buehler have been start-to-start in their performance. Canning is a total wild card. So, while the rotation has probably performed better than expected, there's too much uncertainty lurking to let a pitcher who can raise the floor of the group sign elsewhere. Especially at an entirely reasonable price point. Giolito, even with a decline in his performance over the last handful of seasons, offers the team's best chance at stability at this early stage of the season. That's why you make a signing like this. You're not looking for the upside. You're in it for the innings and relatively consistent performance, considering the bullpen you can roll out as his reinforcements. Even the most grounded-in-reality type of thinker can understand the benefit of pursuing that kind of stability. View full article

With Nick Pivetta facing an extended absence with a flexor strain in his elbow, the San Diego Padres will need to deploy their starting pitching volume earlier than they might have anticipated. Each of Griffin Canning and Matt Waldron were already on rehab assignment, but it’s the latter that’ll get the first call in Pivetta’s stead. He’ll start on Friday against the Los Angeles Angels. It remains to be seen what the Padres will get out of Waldron. The runway may be short, though. Two years ago, Waldron looked like a viable candidate to fill out the back of the rotation. Armed with an effective knuckleball, he posted a 1.8 fWAR across nearly 150 innings in 2024. While the stuff didn’t play on the strikeout side (21.3 K%), he was effectively able to navigate hitters by minimizing baserunners (6.4 BB%) and avoiding hard contact (35.0 Hard-Hit%). He was unable to replicate those results in 2025, however. After an oblique strain set him back to start the year, Waldron made only one start at the top level for the Padres. He was unable to make it through five innings due to some heavy command struggles; he allowed six hits and six walks in that outing. The results weren’t much better in Triple-A. He pitched to a 6.67 ERA (4.99 FIP) and had a hard-hit rate that lingered around 40 percent. His 52.0 percent usage on the knuckleball represented easily his highest usage of that pitch, and while he was able to get decent results with it (24.1 Whiff%), none of his four-seam, sinker, or sweeper proved capable of providing sufficient results. His trio of rehab starts here in 2026 have yielded very different results, however. In 12 innings of work, Waldron has yet to allow a run. He has a slightly improved strikeout rate (30.8 percent) but has demonstrated top-tier command (2.6 percent walk rate). His groundball rate sits at an obscene 64.0 percent. What’s most interesting about this turnaround in performance, though, is that it appears to be wrought by a dramatic change in usage. Waldron has cut the knuckleball usage by more than half. Through those dozen innings, he’s only throwing it 25.6 percent of the time. That’s led to more of a three-pitch blend of the knuckle, the four-seamer (26.9 percent), and the sinker (23.7). The sweeper has come in roughly 17 percent of the time as a fourth offering, registering as his best pitch in the eyes of Stuff+ (100). He’s gotten chase regularly with the former three pitches and has been able to generate more frequent whiffs on the knuckle (27.3 percent), at least partially a byproduct of the more frequent incorporation of the other two. If that’s the version of Waldron the Padres get on Friday, then he can certainly help to stabilize the rotation in Pivetta’s absence. This is not a starting group in search of strikeouts; it’s about mitigating quality contact in the very way that Waldron has done thus far in El Paso. If the command is even close to as pinpoint as it’s been in Triple-A, his enhanced pitch mix should suit him (and the group) quite well. In truth, Waldron needs that to be the case. Even with Pivetta down for an extended period of time, the Padres are otherwise squared in their rotation at present. Each of Michael King and Randy Vásquez has been very good (the latter’s most recent start notwithstanding). Walker Buehler and Germán Márquez have produced varying results start-to-start but have more established big-league track records. With Griffin Canning also likely nearing the end of his own rehab and Joe Musgrove (presumably) returning eventually, there’s a certain onus on Matt Waldron to look good quickly. It’s not so much that he’s pitching for his job on Friday, but it’s not as if he has an extended runway either. There’s a needle in need of threading here, and Waldron will need that four-seam/sinker combination to work in conjunction with the knuckleball to drive his success or his out-of-options status could lead to some rather shaky ground in short order. View full article

There was a brief moment over the weekend where it looked like San Diego Padres first baseman Gavin Sheets was shaking off the early season rust and morphing back into the excelling, change-of-scenery bat that he’d been for much of 2025. After a solo home run early in the game, Sheets sent a three-run homer into the seats in the bottom of the ninth for the second walk-off victory in as many days. Unfortunately, either side of that has been plagued with a rather downtrodden performance from Sheets. Worse yet is that it’s extended to both sides of the ball. We’re still operating within a small sample here in the middle of April, but Sheets has been below average by wRC+ standards (92). Through the roughly 50 plate appearances he’s logged as of the middle of the Mariners series, he’s at a .220/.250/.440 line. His strikeout rate, at 26.9 percent, is abnormally high even against the lower standards set forth when he was at the height of his struggles with the Chicago White Sox. He’s not compensating with deep counts either, as a 3.8 percent walk rate is less than half of what he turned in last season. One concerning trend is that Sheets has apparently lost all semblance of plate discipline. He’s chasing pitches at a 41.1 percent clip (a 10 percent leap from where he was last year) and swinging inside the zone at a slightly lower rate. His 49.7 percent swing rate would represent the highest of his career. There isn’t any discrimination in pitch type, either. He’s swinging at more fastballs than anything but is chasing just about anything regardless of pitch type. What’s even worse for Sheets is that there’s no compensating with the glove. He has been transitioning to full-time work at first base after spending the bulk of his time on the outfield grass last season. However, he’s also turned in -3 Outs Above Average thus far, which ranks 34 out of 35 qualifiers at the position. Only Bryce Harper’s -5 figure is worse. He has a 62 percent success rate against a 69 percent estimated success rate. He’s particularly struggling moving to his right, which is an area in which he’d been only slightly below average (-1) in his career prior to this year’s sample. Plays simply are not being made for a player who was awarded the heaviest run at the position on a roster loaded with first base archetypes. And that’s an important consideration within all of this. Sheets is struggling massively not only to put the ball in play but to help a delicate pitching staff record outs. This is the same roster that features a defending Gold Glove winner in Ty France in addition to Miguel Andujar and Nick Castellanos. Each of France and Andujar have looked strong at the plate while Castellanos’ results are not indicative of the more solid under-the-hood figures with which he’s working. Which means that despite what Sheets has working in his favor – namely the fact that the Padres are currently winning games after a slow start – the runway is going to begin to get shorter. Sometimes in the early season, you see a player (like Castellanos) who is executing solid process and running into bad luck. Others you see a player who gets outside of his general performance and needs to reign it back in before the outcomes begin to fall in line. Given the Padres’ roster construction, Sheets needs to be the latter. Otherwise, the depth chart has the ability to change rather quickly. Especially as Sung Mun Song gets closer to returning and thins out some of the available innings on the bench. View full article

For all of the concerns that we might have had around the starting pitching for the San Diego Padres, the rotation has actually been quite solid in the early going. Their collective 1.3 fWAR ranks 12th among all starting staffs while also sitting in the top 12 in ERA (3.82) and strikeout rate (24.2 percent). It's been imperfect, but it was always going to be. A potential long-term injury to Nick Pivetta, however, reignites concerns over the shape of this staff in 2026. This year's Opening Day starter, Pivetta was an anchor for the rotation in a career year in 2025 (3.7 fWAR). After a shaky outing on Opening Day against Detroit (three innings, six earned runs), Pivetta was flawless for five against San Francisco and held Pittsburgh to two runs in five more frames in his third start. His fourth start on Sunday against Colorado was shaping up to be another solid outing before "elbow stiffness" ended his day early. Details are murky and Pivetta dealt with arm fatigue in spring training, but any sort of elbow injury for a starting pitcher begets concerns for the long-term. In the event that Pivetta remains out, the team has Michael King, Randy Vásquez, Walker Buehler, and Germán Márquez already on the active roster. King has been steady and Vásquez has been excellent, while each of the latter two have been a bit of a mixed bag thus far. An injury would surely lock at least one of them in for a continued rollercoaster, if not both. Bigger picture, the Padres do have Joe Musgrove and Griffin Canning on the mend. However, the timeline between the two has the potential to vary quite a bit. Musgrove has been slow to ramp back up in his recovery from Tommy John surgery and has endured multiple setbacks in attempting his return. Canning, meanwhile, has made his first rehab start off an Achilles tear and looked decent. His impending return feels like more of a sure thing at this stage than Musgrove's. There's a third injured starter with the potential to fill a role in the form of Matt Waldron. He's made a trio of rehab starts in his return from an infection with a 0.00 ERA across 12 innings. And we shouldn't forget about JP Sears, who is in the minors via an option and not an injury. He's made three starts and has struggled with his command, though. Assuming that gets settled as we progress into April, he's another possibility. If the Padres are able to weather the storm without Pivetta for a time, any one of Waldron or Canning or Sears would slide in fairly easily from an on-paper standpoint. Reality, though, is a different beast. Like Buehler and Márquez, the results from each of Waldron, Canning, or Sears have the ability to vary wildly. Waldron was on shaky ground before suffering his setback and Sears was optioned for a reason, while the other three among that quintet have their own checked histories with both injury and performance. The good news, at least, is that there's volume. It's a lot of abstract value given the variables unique to each arm, but they won't have to pull from the relief corps to cover innings like other teams might be forced to. It's important to consider, though, that Pivetta's time in San Diego has come with a certain sense of reliability. Even amid such volume, the spectrum of outcomes for the two currently in the rotation and the two with imminent returns is massive. Would the Padres find money in the budget to bring in someone like Lucas Giolito? Or Tyler Anderson? There are a handful of others available, but money may be a sticking point no matter what. Those already in the organization may be what the organization has to work with to cover the innings lost by Pivetta, regardless of time. Of course, all of this discussion and concern assumes some type of long-term absence in the first place. We still don't know the shape of the injury and, as such, the length of time for which he'll be out. Perhaps it pops as a scare and Pivetta misses a day or a start, with just an individual outing or so in need of coverage. Should it manifest as something more serious, though, there's a volume of depth here that the Padres spent the latter part of the offseason building. They probably hoped they wouldn't have to use it this early (and for this starter), however. UPDATE: Nick Pivetta has been placed on the 15-day IL with an elbow inflammation designation. View full article

The San Diego Padres spent their weekend completing a four-game sweep of the Colorado Rockies, extending what has become a nice rebound from a sluggish start to the year. Unfortunately for Nick Castellanos, he was pinned down a bit from contributing to the repeated offensive outbursts from the collective. Not only from some general misfortune, but more specifically from Rockies outfielder Jordan Beck. Down early against Colorado on Saturday night, Castellanos put a ball into the air toward the right field seats. As it traveled and looked destined for his first home in a Padres uniform, Beck had other ideas: Not that it was a tank of a potential home run, mind you. Castellanos' exit velocity was 98.3 and the contact carried a .290 expected batting average. It would've been a homer in just one out of 30 major-league parks (Houston). The robbery component might've been overblown. But between that and each of the 91.6 MPH groundout with a .350 xBA and a 97.9 MPH line out with a .740 xBA that he also experienced over the weekend, there's a more general string of bad luck that he's running up against so far. Many of Castellanos' underlying metrics look quite good: The xBA alone is indicative of a player that should be seeing far better results than he has to this point. Castellanos has made good contact (as indicated by his Hard-Hit%) while avoiding groundball contact to an excessive 28.0 percent clip. Yet, this is a player who will carry a line of just .200/.263/.286 and a 54 wRC+ into the new week of games. Despite the hard luck associated with that kind of batting line, there are some positives to takeaway. Castellanos' strikeout rate (17.6 percent) and walk rate (8.8 percent) would each represent the best marks of his career. That hard contact rate is also significantly higher than it was last season by roughly 14 percent. These are all objectively good things that should likely be leading to better results than the ones Castellanos has received so far. If the discipline reigned itself in just a bit, he could take greater control over said outcomes. That's the one negative component we've seen out of Castellanos to this point in the young season. Even with a swing rate that is down a couple of percentage points and a chase rate that has remained within one percent of where it was last year, Castellanos has made less contact than last season by about three percent thus far. There isn't anything discernibly different in the types of pitches at which he's swinging, but merely his ability to make contact in and around the zone. Perhaps there's a susceptibility to swinging at less favorable pitches that has emerged given a small spike in his called strike rate (by about two percent), but we're still working within too small a sample to identify real trends there. The takeaway here is that Nick Castellanos has actually been varying shades of fine in 2026. The numbers say he should be quite a bit better, though, and if he's able to drive up the contact rate and create additional batted ball opportunities, his case looks to be one of those that is the natural ebb and flow of fortune in April of a new season. View full article

As preseason prognostications rolled out, it was clear that any hope the San Diego Padres had in 2026 hinged on the strength of their bullpen. Across both their slow start and a more recent stretch of success, that has largely proven to be true. No team in baseball has gotten more out of their bullpen in total value (1.4 fWAR), as the Friars sit in the top 10 in the league in ERA, FIP, walk rate, and groundball rate. It's a group that extends even beyond the very loud success of Mason Miller, but not quite in the way that we would've thought. While Miller was always going to be the guy in the ninth inning upon the free agent departure of Robert Suárez, the expectation was that it would be some blend of Jeremiah Estrada, Adrian Morejon, and Jason Adam in high-leverage situations. Others, like David Morgan, sat slightly behind in the pecking order. Early on, though, it's been Morgan that might just be the most reliable (non-Miller) arm the relief corps has to offer. Each of Estrada and Morejon have faced their struggles in the early going. Estrada maintained a high strikeout rate (26.7 percent) across his seven appearances but was battling woeful command on his way to a 16.7% walk rate prior to being placed on the injured list. Combine that with an inability to miss the barrel when he did allow contact and, consequently, a hard-hit rate approaching half of all batted balls, and you've got a high-leverage reliever working with an ERA north of five. Morejon, meanwhile, is fighting bad luck more than anything, with a .500 batting average allowed on balls in play despite good command. Both of them are working with a strand rate of around 40 percent, which is incredibly scant for relievers of their caliber. As such, with Adam's return still in its infancy following last year's ruptured quad, it may be Morgan's time to slide into the eighth-inning role given his early success. Through his first six appearances of the season, Morgan has been as stable as anyone this side of Mason Miller. He hasn't allowed a run, he's avoided hard contact, and he's getting the ball on the ground at an obscene rate. While he hasn't yet flashed the strikeout upside of his comrades at the back end of the bullpen, he's demonstrated that he has the chops to handle leverage opportunities. Here's his percentile chart from this early stage of the year: There's a lot to like there. Most notable, though, is the blend in his ability to avoid hard contact and get opposing contact on the ground. Combining those two things is going to result in plenty of success regardless of the defense behind you, and that Morgan is doing both up in the 99th percentile speaks to why he's stifled opposing hitters completely thus far in 2026. It's not a mystery as to how he's doing it either, as there's a usage change driving his success. Morgan is primarily working with three pitches. He's throwing a sinker nearly 40 percent of the time, his curveball at about a 32 percent clip, and the four-seamer about 27 percent of the time. That's a shift from last year, when Morgan threw his four-seam the majority of the time (36.7 percent) and brought his slider into the mix much more frequently (18.3 percent of the time). By ditching the slider and putting the sinker at the forefront, Morgan has lost some oomph on the strikeout side but gained it all back in run prevention courtesy of the aforementioned soft, ground-oriented contact. So, what's preventing Morgan from perhaps getting a larger share of those leverage innings? With Estrada on the IL, there's an easy case to be made that he should see some of that work, even when accounting for Adam's return. Ultimately, though, where you see that blue in the above visual is also likely what could pin Morgan down. For one, his command has been imperfect. While the dip in strikeouts is at least partially a byproduct of his change in pitch usage, he also hasn't been able to generate much in terms of whiffs. You want that from a late-inning, high-leverage arm. The fact that he's been susceptible to allowing runners on base via the free pass also isn't working in his favor. Perhaps those two imperfections begin to trend in the appropriate direction as he grows more accustomed to his change in repertoire (assuming permanence). With Adam back in the mix and Morejon experiencing more bad luck than actual struggle, there just isn't quite enough there yet to let Morgan ply his trade in, say, the eighth inning. Nevertheless, this continued growth is encouraging. His emergence last year was part of the reason the Padres felt so good about their volume in relief coming into the year. If Estrada can come back to form upon returning from the IL, you're talking about four legitimate arms leading up to your closer. The value in the pressure that relieves from your starting rotation cannot be overstated. View full article

When working with a small sample in April, it’s sometimes difficult to get a read on a player. Are there trends that we can chalk up to bad luck? Is there some underlying information we can use to project a quick rebound before the calendar turns to May? Or could said trends manifest into something more worrisome over the longer-term? In the case of Fernando Tatis Jr., it’s a mix of all three. The San Diego Padres are off to an uneven start. Almost nobody in the lineup is immune to it, either. Tatis represents one such case given a stat sheet that doesn’t look too favorable. While the physical tools have remained in place (we’ll touch on this in a moment), the early returns through 11 games and nearly 50 plate appearances have featured a brutal .195/.292/.268 line and a wRC+ of only 68. The walk rate, which Tatis reset when he walked at a nearly 13 percent clip last year, has remained high (12.5 percent), but there’s a clear contact issue pinning down his ability to contribute. That inability to feed into an underperforming offensive unit comes in spite of Tatis putting nearly all of his physical tools on display. The defense continues to look outstanding, and the sprint speed is up in the 96th percentile. The most impressive thing he’s done thus far, though, is hit the ball hard. Like, really hard. With the major caveat that we’re working within a minuscule sample, Tatis has made hard contact at a 70.4 percent rate. It’s a wildly unsustainable rate that, nevertheless, has him in the 99th percentile in contact quality. His 14.8 Barrel% is four percent higher than his overall clip from 2025. He’s also making more contact overall by about two percent, with a swing rate that has increased only slightly. These are all, objectively, good things. At the same time, something isn’t jibing between the contact metrics, the approach, and the overall production. It’s not as if Tatis is simply running into bad luck. A .276 batting average on balls in play may not be indicative of the elite contact trends he’s displayed, but it’s also not some horrendous figure. And while a strikeout rate lingering up near 28 percent is abnormal for him, it’s not as if he’s taking too many pitches or expanding the zone too frequently. In fact, his plate discipline numbers look really similar to last year across the board. So, what’s the issue here? Don’t get it twisted; the strikeout rate is, in itself, problematic. It’s not as if he’s working deep counts and experiencing punchouts as a byproduct of that. Tatis’ 3.83 pitches per plate appearance sits below league average at this point in the year. There’s a whiff issue happening, with a rate of 30.4 percent that sits three percent above where he was at last year. So, while the contact rate itself looks decent, there’s too much whiff happening in between that’s leading to the ballooned K%. We also can’t put all of it on merely swinging too much. There’s also a contract distribution issue at play. The concept of PullAIR% has gotten plenty of run in the last couple of years as a key ingredient in unlocking a player’s power potential. Tatis Jr’s PullAIR% through nearly 50 PA sits at 0.0 percent. In fact, he’s only pulling the ball 20.7 percent of the time overall. That’s nearly half of what’s he done in basically every season in which he’s played to date. Nearly half his contact (48.3 percent) has been to the center of the field, with another roughly 30 percent to the opposite field. None of those are going to yield particularly impressive power results. It’s not as if he’s seen a bat speed decline or anything mechanical. If there’s one thing to which we can remotely point, it’s in the intercept. Tatis’ intercept point (the point at which he makes contact with the ball relative to home plate) in 2025 was 3.6 inches in front of the plate. That’s almost identical to what he’d posted in the previous year. This year, he’s at just 0.9 inches in front of it. There’s a timing issue at play. He’s compensating effectively with bat speed, but there’s clearly something happening in his reaction that’s stalling his ability to recognize and swing early. That’s really the only explanation we have to offer at this point. Perhaps that’s something that can be worked out in short order. Tatis spent time last year adjusting his mechanics and his approach. We’re not even to the middle of April yet, so there may just be a further adjustment that’s transpiring in these early days of the season. But given that it’s leading to an absence of power and an influx of strikeouts, it’s something that he needs to adjust early in order to help this offense begin to move along with any level of consistency. View full article

Even with the offense beginning to show signs of life in Boston over the weekend, the San Diego Padres have begun 2026 as one of Major League Baseball’s worst offensive teams. They rank just 26th in the league in runs (32) scored across nine games, with the 28th-ranked isolated power (.116) and 27th-ranked wRC+ (79). While almost no one – this side of Ramón Laureano, at least – has been immune to the struggle, Xander Bogaerts finds himself in a familiar position as a scuffling bat in an underperforming offense. In 2025, Bogaerts was off to such a brutal offensive struggle that by June we wondered if his contract was purely a sunk cost with few redeeming qualities. He was a below-average offensive player for the first two months, posting wRC+ figures of 93 and 83 in April and May of last year, respectively. There was no power to speak of over that stretch, with only his baserunning, in the form of 11 steals, propping him up toward any semblance of positive value. The story to begin 2026 hasn’t been all that different. Through the nearly 40 plate appearances he's accrued prior to the Pirates series, his wRC+ sits at just 48 with a .200/.243/.257 line. The baserunning skills that were on display haven’t had the ability to manifest in such a small sample that also features such infrequent appearances on the bases. Despite the fact that the sample is that small, it’s reignited fears over not only Bogaerts’ longer-term viability in the lineup, but his present value. While Bogaerts’ production has been, undeniably, poor thus far, whether or not those fears are valid this early on is a different discussion. As a general practice, a nine-game sample isn’t enough to have any concern land as legitimate, even for a player whose standing as a regular contributor is on shaky ground. If there’s good process in the underlying numbers, then it becomes even easier to stave off those concerns until the sample actually grows. For Bogaerts, the value lies not only in his baserunning, but in his plate approach. Even through the struggles, he’s been adept at avoiding strikeouts and finding his way on base. His walk rate in 2025 (8.7 percent) was his highest since 2022, and he continued to make contact at a rate around 80 percent. The strikeout rate remained very solid, checking in in the 76th percentile (17.0 percent) league-wide. When you combine all of that with average defense, that’s a workable player (even if he falls short of his contract-related expectations). In 2026, though, we’re only seeing some of that so far. Bogaerts’ 84.1 Contact% would represent the best mark of his career. In general, that would seem to qualify as a positive. Additionally, his 15.9 percent whiff rate currently resides in the 87th percentile and serves as a decrease of about five percent from last year’s rate. He’s also cutting out strikeouts completely at this point, with a mere 8.1 K% that sits up in the 96th percentile. It’s an unsustainable figure, but his previous career-best in that respect was also back in 2015 (15.4 percent), so it’s quite a deviation from what we’re used to seeing from him there. Where we start to run into an issue is in actual swing decisions. For example, a 5.4 percent walk rate would represent Bogaerts’ lowest since 2025. There's also some deeper-rooted problems to worry about. One is the fact that Bogaerts is actually chasing pitches at a far higher rate. His 29.1 percent chase rate thus far is nearly six percent higher than it was last year. His overall Swing% is up about five percent. He’s making contact within that aggression, yes. However, both his barrel rate (3.1 percent) and his hard hit rate (31.3 percent) are down quite a bit. The Barrel% is less than half of what it was last year while the Hard-Hit% is down roughly eight percent. It’s one thing to get balls in play, but sacrificing quality of contact is how you end up with a batting average on balls in play of just .219. This is where the primary issues lie. Bogaerts appears to be sacrificing quality of contact for just any old contact. Merely putting balls in play doesn’t tend to work at this level. Unless you’re a player in possession of a profile that manifests hard contact all over the zone, then there needs to be a certain degree of finesse in the approach that yields positive results. Historically, that's the type of player we’ve seen Bogaerts be. However, there’s something in his newfound aggression that is pinning down his ability to be productive. Fortunately, the sample remains tiny. It’s hard to get too wrapped up in anything he’s doing (or not doing), but the early aggression does seem to be indicative of why he’s facing the struggles that he is. It’s by no means a permanent development, but one on which we’ll have to keep a close eye as the sample begins to grow in April. View full article

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. View full article