What. A. Game.
The San Diego Padres had their first walk off of the year last night and, with it, this team is starting to look like itself once again.
After failing to score more than one run—despite plenty of opportunities—San Diego entered the tenth inning against the Colorado Rockies with Jeremiah Estrada on the bump.
He was mostly solid, but allowed the Rox to put a run on the board, putting the onus on the Friars to score in the bottom of the frame. San Diego delivered and went into the eleventh,
where Estrada gave up another run.
The inning shifted back to the Padres who, down to their final out with two runners on, saw Luis Campusano lace a double into left field, scoring the tying run.
That brought San Diego into the 12th, where the Rockies were finally unable to score.
Fernando Tatis Jr. laid down a sacrifice bunt to move the runner to third base. Colorado intentionally walked Jackson Merrill and Manny Machado to load the bases, thinking that Valente Bellozo could get Xander Bogaerts to ground into a double play.
They were wrong.
Bogaerts turned on a 89.6 mile per hour sinker and launched it into left field for a walk-off grand slam (the first of either for San Diego this year).
Going into tonight, the hope is for an offensive show so that the onus is taken off of the now-taxed pitching staff.
Taking the mound
Tomoyuki Sugano (COL) v. Walker Buehler (SD)
After a serviceable first year in MLB with the Baltimore Orioles (4.64 ERA, 157.0 IP), Sugano was signed by Colorado in hopes to bolster a starting rotation that was a big part of their historically bad 2025.
So far, he’s lived up to the one-year, $5.1 million deal. He’s pitched to a 1.69 ERA with nine strikeouts in 10 2/3 innings.
Sugano’s yet to face most of the Padres in this lineup so it will be interesting to see how he fares now that the Friars’ bats seem to have woken up.
Buehler has been the one sore spot of an otherwise (surprisingly) sterling San Diego rotation. Giving up seven runs across only 6 2/3 innings has hurt his case for a back-end spot once Griffin Canning comes back from the injured list.
The stuff is still there, and there’s positives from his outings. But if he doesn’t limit runs—and soon—his job will be in jeopardy.
Batter up!
After yesterday’s all-around extra-innings heroics, the offense is looking good. But the extra-innings hits made everyone quickly forget about the lack of hitting in the first nine innings (five hits).
But that doesn’t mean the offense is unhealthy, it’s looking infinitely better now than it did the first week of the season. With the righty Sugano on the mound, the Friars will likely look something like this:
- Ramón Laureano, LF
- Fernando Tatis Jr., RF
- Jackson Merrill, CF
- Manny Machado, 3B
- Xander Bogaerts, SS
- Gavin Sheets, 1B
- Miguel Andujar, DH
- Luis Campusano, C
- Jake Cronenworth, 2B
Laureano will probably return to batting leadoff after Cronenworth hit first yesterday. His bat has been solid and he deserves more at-bats in that spot before being bumped, especially against righties.
Campusano likely gets the start over Freddy Fermin since the latter started yesterday. Campusano came in late and hit the aforementioned game-tying double that ended up being a difference-maker in San Diego’s win.
Relief corps
Randy Vásquez kept rolling with 5 2/3 of one-run ball, that seemed to save the bullpen … but then the extra innings came. The back-and-forth finale forced San Diego to use five of their relievers.
Skipper Craig Stammen has continued to show a difficult relationship with bullpen management. He got off to a good start bringing out Bradgley Rodriguez, Adrian Morejon, and Mason Miller. But the decision to not leave Miller in for the tenth was an odd one.
Miller used to be a starter and has the ability to go more than an inning from time to time. Instead, Stammen ended up using Estrada and David Morgan to close out extra innings.
Now the Friars will only have Kyle Hart, Ron Marinaccio and Wandy Peralta. Thankfully, each of those are multi-innings options.
Should Buehler stumble early (like he has in his first two starts), those three options will be first out of the ’pen.
