Good morning,
The story last night was Luke Voit’s three-run homer that tied the game in the sixth inning and the walk and two hits the Padres put together for the winning run in the eighth.
You can read about that in my game story (here).
Right now, let’s talk about the guy who almost lost again but didn’t.
Sean Manaea instead gave the Padres a chance to win, same as he usually does.
It is tempting to denigrate the quality start, especially the way Manaea pushes its boundaries so often.
The definition of a quality start is one that lasts at least six innings and in which the starter gives up no more than three earned runs.
Here is Manaea’s game log:
Notice he has allowed three earned runs in four of his seven quality starts. That would be the most recent four quality starts.
That might not be Cy Young stuff. But it is winning stuff.
Major league teams are averaging 4.24 runs per game this season. The Padres are 4-5 in Manaea’s starts because they have scored a total of 33 runs in his starts. They have scored 23 of those while he has been in games, and he has pitched seven innings. The average of 3.7 runs while he is in starts is 23rd among the 32 starters who have thrown at least 50 innings this season.
That kind of luck — and the fact the Padres had come back to win a game in which they were down by more than two just once this season before last night — made their chances seem bleak after Manaea surrendered a first-inning homer and gave up two runs in the fourth to spot the Pirates a 3-0 lead.
“We haven’t scored a ton for him recently,” manager Bob Melvin said. “… After giving up the three runs, he basically had to be perfect there for the last three innings.”
What Manaea does is something akin to miraculous. Time after time, he somehow skirts the edge of disaster without disaster befalling him. In fact, the danger only ever seems fleeting.
Because he has an ability to stop it.
He does so the way managers wish more pitchers did — by attacking the problem. He is a strike thrower.
“He’s just really aggressive with what he does, and he doesn’t go run and hide at times,” said Melvin, who managed Manaea in Oakland from 2016 through ‘21. “He doesn’t nitpick and walk guys and put guys on base for the most part. He’s going right after people. If he gives up a solo homer every now and then, so be it. But I think he’s really good about limiting and making guys work to get on base.”
Bryan Reynolds’ homer last night was the eighth Manaea has allowed this season, tied for eighth most in the National League. Seven of those have been solo home runs. He has followed five of those seven with at least two outs and four of them with at least four outs.
In short, he stops the bleeding as soon as a cut is made.
“I think it’s all part of his personality,” Melvin said. “He just lets it go and goes out there the next inning and just does his thing and doesn’t let it snowball on him. … (Manaea is) a hitter away from coming out of the game if it starts to snowball on him a little bit, but he did anything but. The next thing you know, he gets us through seven innings and pitches a heck of a game.”
Said Manea, who last night went seven innings for the third time this season: “I had some rough starts in Oakland where I’ve gone three or four innings. The feeling of that and putting all that pressure on the bullpen is the worst. At this point in my career it’s, ‘What can I do to help the team?’ And that’s go as deep as I can and take the pressure off the bullpen. It’s a long season. I know it’s not ideal, but when you have those opportunities and those chances you have to take them. I gave up three runs. Not the greatest, but I’ll take it.”
Later and better
The trade for Manaea four days before the season opener is proving to have been a significant one, as he has helped eat innings the bullpen would otherwise have to cover.
The trade for Taylor Rogers the morning of the season opener is proving to have been even more significant.
Rogers pitched a perfect ninth inning last night for his major league-leading 17th save. in doing so, he accomplished this:
His walk from the bullpen and warm-up pitches at home are accompanied by a presentation featuring his impassive face and flames flickering on the video boards all around Petco Park while Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” blares. When Rogers appeared last night, most of the sellout crowd was still around.
“It’s awesome,” he said.
Maintaining focus and effectively harnessing the adrenaline in those situations is requisite for being a successful closer.
Rogers spoke last night of yet “another step” he has taken.
“Once you get two outs, the fans start standing up and cheering,” he said. “It’s really easy to try to get result-oriented and try to hurry to that finish line. I actually had a discussion with (catcher Austin) Nola the other day about that. The atmosphere is so cool, like, you want to hurry up and get it done. So you almost have to lock in a little bit more when the fans are that way.”
After the second out last night, Nola pointed out to him and thrust his fist in a way that reminded Rogers stay focused.
“It was that discussion we had,” Rogers said. “It was, ‘All right, it’s time to take that next step.’ That was cool.”
Big swing
Now, about Voit.
He hit his third home run in 88 at-bats with the Padres. That means he is hitting home runs at almost half the rate he did in his first five big-league seasons.
Part of the reason is that he is missing on more swings. More than he usually does and more than anyone else in MLB this season.
His 47 percent miss rate is 13 percentage points higher than his career rate coming into this season, and it is the highest of any batter that has taken more than 35 swings in 2022.
“I’m not used to swinging and missing this much,” Voit said. “I watch video, and I’m out front on stuff and under sliders. I can hit the high pitch, and I just haven’t been able to hit the high pitch right now. I’m just trying to chase it more and more out of the zone just to prove myself instead of just sticking with my plan and just being a hitter and hitting the ball, instead of trying to hit it over the scoreboard every time.”
Voit managed the big moment last night by using his head and his big swing.
Pirates reliever Wil Crowe came into the game throwing his slider 43 percent of the time to right-handed batters. It is his most frequent offering.
“I just get too big, and I just need to kind of slow the game down sometimes,” Voit said. “The game is already hard enough if you hit .300. We fail a lot, and sometimes you’ve just got to just take every positive you can out his game. I finally got a big situation to come up and just slow the game down and look for a pitch that I knew I was gonna get. I finally got it.”
Here is the homer (I made it the Spanish broadcast, because I don’t have to understand every word to know that Eduardo Ortega is a treasure):
On track
Fernando Tatis Jr. spent some time taping Jurickson Profar’s bat for him before batting practice yesterday.
As far as we know, that is the only time Tatis has held a bat since his March 16 wrist surgery. Yet he and the Padres insist he is on track for a return in late June.
“Everything is pointing that way,” he said.
The latest imaging on Tatis’ wrist did not make the Padres comfortable enough for him to hold a bat.
Asked how he could be so certain of his timeline when he has yet to even hold a bat, Tatis laughed.
So, it is possible he has held a bat.
“Maybe in the shadows,” he said, still laughing.
Every player who has to watch his team play describes it as the most difficult thing they have to go through in the game. And it is difficult to imagine a player less suited to be sidelined.
“It was hard,” Tatis said of getting the results of his latest CT scan. “I was ready to go, but I’ve got to listen to the doctors. … It’s been pretty hard. But it’s one of those moments I’ve got to learn from and mature. I have to learn how to be patient. I’ve never been one that is good at waiting, so I have to learn.”
Another scan of the bone is likely to occur next week. Once he does begin swinging, Tatis would need to progress from light swinging with no contact to hitting off a tee to batting practice to facing live pitching to a rehab assignment. That process could be completed in as little as three weeks, though the Padres certainly won’t rush their 23-year-old star.
“I just need to see pitches,” he said. “I’m not going to put a time on it. I just need to get my timing out there and be confident at the plate.”
Easy does it
On successive pitches before ultimately drawing a walk in the fourth inning, Manny Machado hit a line drive down the left field line that was foul by maybe a foot and then a ball to the Western Metal building that was foul by maybe a foot.
The latter, at 103.5 mph, was harder than all but one ball the Padres put in play last night.
They did not exactly rip Pirates pitching.
Only Eric Hosmer’s eighth-inning single (105.5) was harder than Machado’s foul, and Jurickson Profar’s groundout in the first inning (101.9) and Voit’s sixth-inning homer (102.2) were the only other balls that had an exit velocity in triple digits.
Wil Myers’ game-winning broken-bat single to center field left his bat at 82.6 mph. The Padres had three singles with an exit velocity below 74 mph.
The Padres put a total of five balls in play harder than 95 mph, more than four below their season average. It was not their season low, however. They put just four balls in play that hard in the second game of their May 4 doubleheader at Cleveland (a loss) and on April 18 against the Reds (a win).
Different game
Before the Padres strung together the walk and pair of hits in the eighth, Melvin tried to win with some real small ball.
After Ha-seong walked to lead off the seventh, with the score tied 3-3, Trent Grisham pinch-hit for Jorge Alfaro and bunted Kim to second base. It ended up being a fruitless endeavor as the next two batters made outs.
Bunting is not something Melvin had believed in doing much in past years. Like many, he considers it a wasted out in most situations. But with offense down all around the majors, including with his team, he has called for a few more this season.
Grisham’s sacrifice bunt was the Padres’ sixth of the season, which is seventh most in the majors. They are fourth in the majors with 18 sacrifice flies.
The manufacturing has been working to a large extent. Despite ranking 23rd in batting average and 26th in slugging percentage, the Padres rank 12th in runs scored.
“What are we, a quarter of the way through the season at this point?” Melvin said. “You have some thoughts as you move along. May have some thoughts that are maybe even more so as you move along — depending on what we’re doing, night game, heavy air here. Might take the chance of maybe doing a little bit more manufacturing.”
Sacrifice hits are down 40 percent this year compared to last season at this same point. But sacrifice flies are up 22 percent. The MLB-wide batting average is virtually the same, on-base percentage is down four points, and slugging percentage is down 13 points. Home runs are down eight percent.
“I was looking at it today,” Melvin said of some of those statistics. “… So it is a little bit different. But I think it’s still kind of a process of trying to really figure out where this thing is going. I do think we have more as far as slug goes at some point in time. But I think most managers are trying to evaluate where you go with this and how much 90 feet means more with the potential of just giving up an out.”
Shot to the heart
Joe Musgrove makes his ninth start of the season tonight. He has gone at least six innings in every start and has yet to allow more than two earned runs, and the Padres have won all of his starts.
He held the Pirates, his former team, to one run over seven innings on May 1 in Pittsburgh.
If the Pirates do get to Musgrove tonight, it likely will be done by the heart of the order. Because Musgrove doesn’t let much up against the batters that shouldn’t beat him.
He has allowed a .237 on-base percentage to batters not in the heart of the order (3-4-5). That is the ninth-best mark in the majors. Opposing 3-4-5 hitters have a .282 OBP against Musgrove.
“We really focus a lot on getting the guys out that we should get out,” Musgrove said. “That 6-7-8-9 in the lineup, you get those guys out, it makes your job a lot easier. You’re essentially just trying to get to face those big guys with fewer guys on base. So getting the guys out that you need to around them is very important.”
Say what?
Occasionally, I will hear from a fan who wonders why I quote Myers as much as I do.
Well, first, he is among the most accountable players on the team, available after wins and losses. He makes $20 million a year and believes that one of the things that comes with that salary is the responsibility to explain his play and be something of a team spokesman. Also, he is entertaining and engaging and, most important, a truth teller.
Like this, after it was suggested to him that he has been swinging well since coming off the injured list:
“I just finished a 1-for-16, so not that good,” he said.
Myers is actually 2-for-16 over the past four games. That follows a nine-game stretch in which he was 12-for-36 (.333).
Tidbits
- Hosmer was 2-for-3 with a walk last night and is 7-for-18 with four walks during a five-game hitting streak. A hit today would match the longest streak of the season for Hosmer, who ranks eighth in the majors with a .333 batting average and ninth with a .397 on-base percentage.
- Machado was 0-for-2 and walked twice. His.357 average ranks third in the majors, and his .438 OBP is second.
- Last night was the Padres’ 13th victory in a game in which they trailed. That is tied with the Yankees for the most comeback victories in the major leagues. It was their second comeback win in a game in which they trailed by three runs. They have overcome four two-run deficits and seven one-run deficits.
- This was ridiculous. Just your latest reminder to not take what you see from Machado for granted. (Also, a reminder that Hosmer is playing excellent defense this season.)
All right, that’s it for me. Talk to you tomorrow.
P.S. Remember when I told you late last month about Padres P.R. man Danny Sanchez’s sunglasses and how he is of the belief he looks good in them. I had been unable to get a photo so you could judge for yourselves. But as Bob Melvin’s pregame media scrum ended yesterday, the manager peered out into a suddenly bright sky and noted, “The May gray has lifted.” Danny evidently took that as license to go shades up, because I turned around a few minutes later and, lo and behold, this is what I saw:
Danny Sanchez, cool as can be.
(Kevin Acee/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Now, also, note the two phones. Maybe a dude does need those glasses when he’s making stuff happen like Danny is.
www.sandiegouniontribune.com
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism