Padres Daily: Double dip of despair

Good morning from St. Louis,

Are you ready for some insightful analysis?

Not pitching well and not being able to hit means you don't have a good team.

What happened last night was a double dip of despair.

If the Padres are going to hit .216 (as they are this season) and their best starting pitcher is going to have a 6.41 ERA (as Michael King does over his past five starts) what are they even doing?

They're not going to the postseason if those things continue. That really goes without saying.

The Padres lost 3-2 last night in a game where the only positive that could be discerned was that it wasn't as bad as the 3-0 loss the night before.

Barely.

You can read in my game story (here) how Andre Pallante followed up Dustin May's complete game shutout of the Padres on Monday with a gem of his own.

The Padres have five hits and two walks over the past two days, just the seventh time in franchise history and the first time since 2015 they have reached base seven or fewer times in a two-game span.

Sure, Pallante has been pitching well. Recently, he has been better than May. Major league pitchers are good. Hitting is hard. And on and on it goes.

"We just came off a series where we put up a few runs, and now it’s hard to come by," Padres manager Craig Stammen said after last night's game. "Unfortunately, that’s been the majority of our season, or at least the last month, month-and-a-half of our season. So it gets to the point where it’s a little frustrating, and we've got to do something about it."

So, yes, the offense has to be better.

It is presently terrible. Officially the worst in the major leagues.

The Padres rank last in MLB in average (.216), on-base percentage (.289), slugging percentage (.647) and runs per game (3.81).

But here's the thing: You have to assume the offense will improve, that the hitters being paid to hit will eventually hit the way they have almost always hit. Because if you're not going to assume that, there is no use even thinking any of the remaining 90 games matter.

It was just three days ago that the Padres were on a run of more than a week in which they had shown plentiful signs the offense was breaking out of its slumber.

With that in mind, let us consider the state of the starting rotation. Because that might turn out to be the real albatross.

King allowed three runs in 4⅓ innings last night.

"He wasn’t sharp from the very beginning,” Stammen said. "Tons of 3-2 counts. That’s not him. Drove his pitch count up. He kind of fought through it for four innings, and then the fifth inning, they got to him the third time through the lineup, which has kind of been par for the course for our starting rotation."

Last night was the eighth time in the past 24 games a Padres starter has not completed five innings.

A Padres starter has gone at least six innings just five times in the past 24 games. A starter has gotten at least one out in the sixth another two times in that span.

For the season, Padres starters have gone six innings 18 times, tied for third fewest by any team's starters. They have gone more than five innings 26 times, fourth fewest in the league.

A starter going 5⅓ innings is something of a dividing line in determining success.

Teams have a .621 winning percentage this season when their starter records at least one out in the sixth inning. That winning percentage is .383 when a team's starter goes five innings or fewer.

So you see the problem here?

And now King is part of the problem?!!

I wrote two weeks ago (here) about how King was scuffling but grinding through games pretty impressively while searching for the feel on his best pitch.

He continued to grind. His two starts leading up last night had both lasted at least six innings. He allowed three runs in one and four in the other.

By all accounts, King has been making progress with his sinker for weeks. He was "close," he and others have said.

And then last night, the sinker was not his only problem. He had nothing.

"This is definitely the worst one of them all," he said.

King was guaranteed $22 million this season with the expectation he would be one of the Padres' most reliable pitchers. With Nick Pivetta and Joe Musgrove out until at least August, he absolutely has to be their most reliable pitcher.

Even if those two were healthy, King is arguably the Padres' most-talented starting pitcher. He is the guy they should be able to expect will, at worst, give them a good chance to win. He should be counted on to dominate more than every once in a while.

He dominated the Dodgers on May 18. That is the only game he has dominated anyone.

"Michael has got to lead the way," Stammen said. "He has got to be a little bit better. I know he wants to be better, and he will be better going forward."

If that assurance from Stammen doesn't alleviate your concern, maybe it is because it's the same assurance he has been giving about the offense.

3 mil again

The Padres this week surpassed 3 million tickets sold for 2026, meaning this will be the fourth consecutive season attendance exceeds 3 million.

The only other time they did so previously was 2004, the teams first year playing in Petco Park.

The only other teams to draw 3 million every year since ‘23 are the Dodgers, Phillies and Yankees.

Tidbits

• Samad Taylor's single off Pallante's glove with two outs in the fifth inning was the Padres' first hit. That extended Taylor's hitting streak to eight games, during which he is batting .379 (11-for-29). The streak is tied with Miguel Andujar (twice) and Luis Campusano for the longest by a Padres player this season. Taylor, who stole second base and scored on a single by Ty France, has scored and/or driven in a run in seven of the eight games he has started since being called up on June 3.
• France is now 3-for-28 (.107) over his past 10 games. To that point, his .291 average led the team.
• Ron Marinaccio took over for Yuki Matsui in the sixth inning with two outs and a runner on first and (after hitting a batter) ending the inning on a lineout. Marinaccio has stranded all 11 runners he has inherited this season. He is the only pitcher in the major leagues to have inherited more than nine runners without allowing any to score.
• After opening for the Padres on Monday, Wandy Peralta closed out last night's game. He allowed a single in the eighth inning but otherwise was just as effective as when he retired all three batters he faced a day earlier. Peralta has a 2.06 ERA in 30 appearances (35 innings) this season. That includes a 0.83 ERA over his past 17 appearances (21⅔ innings).
• The Padres have had an MLB-high 35 quality starts thrown against them. Given that they have faced an opener five times, opposing starting pitchers have gone at least six innings and allowed no more than three earned runs against the Padres in 52% of the games in which they could have done so.
• The Padres have released veteran left-hander Marco Gonzales, who had a 7.99 ERA in 47⅓ innings at Triple-A El Paso as he tried to come back from a September 2024 flexor tendon surgery.

All right, that's it for me. Early game today (11:15 a.m. PT).

Talk to you tomorrow.

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