Good morning,
That was quite a night at the ballpark.
“I don’t talk about playoff atmosphere very often in the regular season, but today it felt like that,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “It was a packed house, and I think Michael King threw his best game, certainly of the year and I can’t imagine him throwing a better game ever.”
You can read in my game story (here) about how King and Dodgers starting pitcher Tyler Glasnow combined to do something that had never been done during the Padres’ 2-1 victory last night.
We will talk further about King, who was more dominant last night than he was even in holding the Brewers hitless through 6⅔ innings last month — and against a better offense.
But now, let’s talk more about Luis Arraez.
Many in the sellout crowd stood and cheered as Arraez walked to the plate for his first at-bat at Petco Park in a Padres uniform.
He really made them cheer on his final at-bat of the night, lining a walk-off single to center field with one out in the ninth-inning to score pinch-runner Tyler Wade from second base.
“Just want to hit the ball,” Arraez said of his plan at the plate in that at-bat. “I just want a good pitch. I just want to try to hit to the middle, and he threw me the perfect pitch to hit.”
So, essentially, the approach by the player with the highest batting average in the major leagues over the past five seasons was the same as it always is.
“I don’t try to do too much,” Arraez said. “I just be me there. When I see the hole to the middle, I just say, ‘OK, if he throws me a pitch middle-middle, I want to hit to the middle. And thank God, he pitched me right there.”
Last night concluded Arraez’s first week with the Padres following his trade from Miami.
It has felt like the Padres added more than just one player to their lineup. Such is his ability to get hits.
Arraez had told hitting coach Victor Rodriguez after Campusano’s double: “I’ll finish this game.”
This is what Jake Cronenworth recalled of his thought when Arraez went to the plate in the ninth with a man on second: “If there’s any guy you’d want up right now, it’s that guy.”
That is not how Roberts saw it in the moment.
“I just felt that if we could pitch Arraez carefully, we get a chance to get to Tatis,” Roberts said of his decision to pitch to Arraez. “But I wasn’t going to concede Arraez to get to Tatis and then bring us Cronenworth, who both … are swinging the bats really well are and really good hitters. So you kind of pick your poison right there, and just didn’t work out.”
In his six games with the Padres, Arraez is 9-for-24 with five runs and two RBIs.
“The guy is just a special talent,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said. “I like him where he’s hitting because the bottom of the lineup has been productive. So it’s a two-way benefit, really. Because he’s got the ability to draw people in. … He’s also got the ability to set the table.”
I wrote Thursday (here) about Arraez’s unique talent.
Late-inning fight
Last night was the seventh time this season the Padres won a game in which they trailed or were tied in the seventh inning or later.
If you are still looking for reasons to believe this year is different from last, that is one.
The Padres had just 17 such wins all of 2023 and six of those came during their 16-3 finish.
“I think it is our team,” Shildt said. “I think we’ve demonstrated that pretty much all season. It’s a tremendous trait for a team over a 162-game season that you know is not going to give anything away in competition and is going to compete, regardless of circumstance. And I just love the way we got after it. It was a good ballgame.”
Here are some more stats to suggest the Padres are a different team:
King’s big night
Michael King had pitched well this season. He had pitched poorly this season.
He had not pitched this well against a lineup like this.
“We didn’t really have any answers for him tonight,” the Dodgers’ Freddie Freeman said. “He was just really good. He located. Seemed like he was hitting every spot that he needed to. You can see what good pitching does to a good lineup.”
The Dodgers have one of those. Their first two hitters, Mookie Betts and Shohei Ohtani, rank 1-2 in MLB in offensive WAR. The top six batters in their lineup last night rank in the top 43 in OPS-plus.
The last time King faced the Dodgers, he allowed four home runs in five innings.
This time he allowed two hard-hit balls in play (both outs) and two soft singles while striking out 11 batters over seven innings.
Last month at Dodger Stadium, he threw first-pitch strikes to 12 of 24 batters, including two that were hit over the wall. Last night, he threw 22 first-pitch strikes to 27 batters, only one of which was put in play.
Moreover, on his second and third times through the Dodgers order on April 12, he threw his changeup or sweeper for a strike that was not a base hit just 21 times in 36 pitches (58 percent). Last night, those numbers were 21 of 30 (70 percent), and that included the first two of those pitches being called balls.
“I think the big thing for me today was I was throwing strikes with my offspeed,” King said. “You can easily flip the lineup with just good fastball command. But then the second and third time, it’s hard to do if you only have the fastball. And I think the last time I faced them, they were able to get to me because I was gonna get ahead with fastballs, and then I couldn’t locate the offspeed, and I had to go back to the fastball with two strikes. And it’s an easy game plan (for hitters) if you’re if you’re gonna attack that way. So it’s an emphasis of throwing offspeed for strikes, being able to locate those in zone to then have my fastball to be able to speed them up a little bit.”
King also threw harder. His four-seam fastball was up almost 1 mph from the April 12 meeting. And he threw eight of them harder than 95 mph last night, up from three on April 12. His sinker was also slightly faster, on average, and it was moving.
King had pretty much been either really good or really bad in his previous seven starts, allowing a combined 20 runs in 23 innings in his four starts and one run in 20⅔ innings in his other three starts.
His past two starts, in which he has not allowed a run over 13 innings, are the first time he put together back-to-back quality starts.
But he said he didn’t feel like last night was a big game for him.
“The big one will be in the World Series,” he said. “That’s when I’ll say yes to that.”
Shildt pushed back on the idea this validated King, who is in his first full season as a starter.
“I think the validation (had) already taken place really, with multiple quality starts and depth in games,” Shildt said. “The Milwaukee game might have been the first validator. I think now we’re seeing who Michael King is, and he’s established he’s a good starter in this league.”
Not helping
Cronenworth thought King could have had an even better night if he had not had to throw seven extra pitches following Cronenworth’s error in the third inning.
He lamented the play in which he was unable to hold onto a soft but severely spinning line drive by Teoscar Hernandez that had appeared it would end the second inning before it went in and out of Cronenworth’s glove.
“I wish I could have somehow caught that ball and kept it in my glove,” Cronenworth said. “I think we get another inning out of him. … I think he would have been pitching in the eighth there (with) what he had going tonight.”
Close call
Another play by Cronenworth could have had even worse consequences.
After fielding a Shohei Ohtani grounder in the sixth inning, Cronenworth chose to try to beat Ohtani to the bag rather than toss the ball to King.
“That was not a great decision,” Cronenworth said.
Tidbits
- Last night was the Padres’ first victory in their four games wearing their City Connect uniforms this season. Said Arraez: “Amazing uniform. If it was up to me, I’d use it every day.”
- Jeff Sanders’ pregame notebook (here) discussed some changes made by Matt Waldron, who starts tonight. The story also conveys the good news that Joe Musgrove played catch yesterday, as he said he planned to do back when he went on the injured list this past Sunday. Musgrove said he would likely throw a couple bullpens next week before he slots back into the rotation when his turn would normally come, for the team’s third game in Atlanta next Sunday (May 19).
- Campusano’s third-inning home run and double leading off the ninth were the Padres’ only hits besides Arraez’s game winner. It was their fewest hits in a victory since June 11, 2022, in a 2-1 win over the Rockies.
- Last night was Campusano’s 27th multi-hit game in 93 career starts.
- Arraez extended his on-base streak to 17 games, the second-longest active streak in the major leagues behind the 18 games in a row Freddie Freeman has reached base safely.
- Cronenworth was 0-for-3, ending his career-best hitting streak at 12 games.
- Robert Suarez worked the top of the ninth with the game tied 1-1. So instead of a save, he got his second win. Suarez has allowed one run in 17⅓ innings (16 appearances).
- Yuki Matsui, who surrendered the Dodgers’ run in the eighth inning, was on the field for the postgame celebration, and Shildt said the expectation was the left-hander would be fine after being struck on the left shin by Betts’ 103.4 mph line drive. The Padres need Matsui to pitch better. He has allowed four runs on four hits and three walks over his past three appearances.
- King had eight strikeouts through three innings, joining Blake Snell (2021), Tyson Ross (2015) and Jake Peavy (2003) as the only Padres to ever get that many strikeouts that quickly at the start of a game.
- Bryce Miller wrote (here) about beloved San Diego-based agent Barry Axelrod, who died Thursday at age 77. And Tom Krasovic wrote (here) on Sean Burroughs, the former Padres player who died of a heart attack Thursday at age 43.
All right, that’s it for me.
Talk to you tomorrow.
