Good morning from Phoenix,
All we will be talking about a few hours after this hits your inbox is the trade(s) the Padres have made.
So, we’ll make this quick.
No, really. I know I said that yesterday and then wrote 2,500 words. But today is different.
The Padres are going to add a starting pitcher today.
They are not going to trade Mason Miller. That is for sure.
They are not going to trade Adrian Morejón. That is almost for sure. And it is for sure if they are serious about making the playoffs in 2026.
So we will wait to see what magic A.J. Preller and his crew work to make the Padres better.
Because the Padres did their part leading up to the deadline.
You can read my game story (here) about their eighth victory in nine games, a 5-4 win against Giants that was built by a string of impressive pitching performances. (Part of what made it so impressive is that even the unimpressive performance was impressive. We’ll talk about that later.)
Preller intended for the Padres to be buyers all along. What the team accomplished the last week-and-a-half was cementing that conviction.
Moreover, the Padres put themselves in a better place.
On July 23, they were four games out of playoff position with four teams between them and the final National League postseason spot. They are now a game out of playoff position and the first team on the outside looking in.
And tonight they begin a four-game series against one of the teams directly in front of them.
“It’s not a half-game anymore; it’s a full game,” said Jake Cronenworth, meaning that every win or loss carries with it a bigger swing in the standings when playing a team head-to-head. “Were playing really well right now. They’re playing really well right now. It’s going to be a great series.”
The Padres have for the first time this season altered their rotation to line up a starter against a particular opponent. Michael King was pushed back a day from his scheduled start yesterday so he could go tonight. And the biggest reason is that he has mostly dominated the Diamondbacks.
“Part of it was (the Giants) have a lot of lefties, and we wanted some lefties to pitch against them today,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said. “The other part was separating Walker (Buehler) and Michael so they’re not back-to-back, so we can spread this pitching out a little bit. And then, yeah, we’re facing the Diamondbacks. We’re chasing them. He’s our best pitcher. It’d be nice to have our best pitcher pitching against them. He would’ve missed them otherwise.”
For all the focus on the trade deadline — and today is important for how Preller’s moves can fill holes — there are actual games to be played.
Lots of them.
“We’ve still got two months of baseball left,” Jackson Merrill said. “It’s not like it’s the last weekend of the season.”
Pitching in
The Padres won yesterday by doing something they hope to have to not do much more.
Their pitching Frankenstein is mostly working swimmingly. But even when such a game goes well, the reasons why it is unsustainable are evident.
They have announced their starters tomorrow and Wednesday as “TBD.” That means two more kitchen-sink games unless the starting pitcher they are virtually certain to acquire today is ready to go.
While team sources have almost exclusively talked about making just one starting pitcher addition, it is possible the Padres get two new starting pitchers. Even if they don’t, they could turn to Randy Vásquez and/or Germán Márquez for traditional starts for a stretch this month.
And the anticipated return of Joe Musgrove and Nick Pivetta later in August should eradicate these all-staff games altogether.
Jeff Sanders spoke to Musgrove yesterday about his return (and others’) as it relates to the Padres competing with the Dodgers. There are some interesting quotes from Musgrove in that story (here).
But if we can just appreciate for a moment what the Padres have done.
It will almost certainly take the starting rotation — with actual starting pitchers throughout — performing well going forward if the Padres are to make the postseason. But if they do get to October, they will look back at this period as a big reason why.
Five of their past eight victories have come in expanded bullpen games.
In those games, the Padres starters-turned-relievers have largely responded to their new roles, which have maximized their strengths and, in some cases, changed their outlooks.
Kyle Hart started yesterday and extended his scoreless innings streak to 9⅔ innings by getting the first nine outs. Griffin Canning settled down after allowing a home run to the first batter he faced to retire six of the next seven batters he faced.
In between their multi-inning efforts was JP Sears’ rough inning, which might also have been the most impressive inning of the day.
Stammen called Sears the “player of the game” for what he did in allowing a run on two hits, a walk and a hit batter in the fourth inning, throwing 28 pitches just three days after throwing 67 pitches in the series opener against the Giants.
“Morejón coming back in for one-and-a-third again was also very impressive,” Stammen said. “But a lot of kudos to JP for taking the ball and being willing to put his career on the line for the sake of the team.”
Sears did not see it that way.
“If I can pitch, I can pitch,” he said. “… You don’t worry about that as much as a competitor. You care more about the results because at the end of the day that’s really all you care about.”
It is remarkable to consider Sears has been a starter his entire career. That means that no matter how many pitches he has thrown in an outing, he has had at least four days rest before pitching in a game again.
The only other time he had pitched after having fewer than four days off was in the second game of his career, on April 16, 2022, when he was asked to work one inning (18 pitches) after throwing 11 pitches in one inning in his MLB debut three days earlier.
“Obviously, I hadn’t pitched like that in a while,” he said. “But I felt fully ready for this. … I just think this is part of being in the position that I’m in. If I need to pitch, I’m ready to go. If I’m not, if I don’t feel good, then I’m going to be honest about it.”
However, it seemed clear as Sears threw a lot of pitches to spots he did not intend that he was not sharp.
Sears was the first of the Padres’ erstwhile starters brought back on short rest during this experiment.
They have a series of assessments they apply in determining when a pitcher is ready to pitch again. They include a simple eye test, an examination of the metrics and a Ruben Niebla-developed algorithm that measures stress on the pitchers based on their recent workload. Stammen and Niebla also rely on their conversations with the pitchers on the day of a game.
The process is more complicated with what they are doing now, putting their starting pitchers in different roles. And they complicated it by swapping King’s start days.
Stammen seemed dubious after yesterday’s game that Sears had truly been ready to go.
“There is a caveat with all of this, and that is some experimentation with how quick guys can recover and come back,” Stammen said. “Sometimes they say they can, and whether that’s, ‘Yeah, I could throw,’ but ‘Will you be effective?’ That’s what we’re trying to figure out.
“JP is a tough dude, and he can bounce back really quickly. We’ve got to figure out what that optimal recovery time is. I think today we all saw that he was just a little not himself, not at his peak performance. We’ve got to be honest with each other. I’ve got to do a better job communicating and make sure I’m putting him in a situation where he can have success, not where he’s just grinding through it to survive. It’s a little different. These guys can throw every day, but there’s a difference between throwing a bullpen out in the bullpen and pitching against the middle of the Giants’ order.”
More Morejón
No reliever is working more than Morejón, who got the final four outs yesterday and reached 60 innings pitched this season in just his 52nd appearance.
Only the Brewers’ Aaron Ashby has a higher innings-to-appearances ratio, having pitched 58⅓ innings in 50 games.
“It is rather amazing, the workload that he’s handling and the effectiveness he has on the back end of that,” Stammen said of his prized left-hander.
Morejón will be unavailable today after working 1⅓ innings for the second day in a row.
He entered Saturday’s game with a runner on third and got the final out of the sixth inning before striking out all three batters he faced in the seventh. He entered in the same situation yesterday, except in the eighth inning, and stranded the runner at third before getting two strikeouts and a groundout in the ninth.
It is impossible to say without knowing what the return would be. But it seems insane to think the Padres would be serious about contending for a championship if they were to trade Morejón today.
(There was a report yesterday that the Padres turned down a trade with the Yankees involving Morejón, though a team source said the details of that report were inaccurate.)
I voted for Morejón for team MVP last season. My justification was in an article I wrote (here) in spring training.
While his overall numbers have not been quite what they were last year, there is an argument to be made that Morejón has been more crucial to the Padres’ success in 2026.
Jason Adam has been out almost half the season between two stays on the injured list, and Jeremiah Estrada has been down for a total of 67 games between his two IL stints. That is a big part of why Morejón has gotten four outs or more in 20 of his appearances and gone two full innings seven times, once more of both than he did all last season.
“It’s just that’s basically my job,” he said through interpreter Pedro Gutiérrez. “It’s what I’m here to do. I’m just happy to be trusted in those situations. The team trusts me to be in it in crucial moments of the game. I was able to come through once again today.”
Morejón was asked about the trade speculation the past few weeks, which has arisen because he is due a huge payday as a free agent after the season and there was a time the Padres might have been sellers. He reiterated yesterday he wants to remain with the Padres and would like to sign with them in free agency.
In a story (here) Annie Heilbrunn wrote last week, with quotes from Miller, Morejón and Ty France about having the trade talk hover over them, it was abundantly clear how special the Padres are to Morejón, who signed with them in 2016 after defecting from Cuba.
Stammen was asked yesterday if he could imagine not having Morejón in the bullpen?
His only hesitation was the second it took him to smile before he said, “I cannot.”
Unique understanding
Morejón knew as soon as Miller was called on to get five outs at the end of Saturday’s game that he would be pitching again Sunday if the game was close.
“I started preparing right after the game,” he said.
Morejón has an additional resource this season when figuring out how to prepare and assess his readiness.
Stammen is one of 11 pitchers since 2018 to have made at least 67 appearances and pitched at least 79 innings in a season. He did it three times (2018, ‘19 and ‘21) for the Padres.
“I lived it, and we have that commonality that we can talk about a little bit, where you’re a well-used reliever and you still have to find a way to be effective,” Stammen said. “He’s got much better stuff than I ever did, but we can share that common ground and talk through it. Hopefully I have a good idea of when he does need a break and when I can push him a little bit.”
Swinging away
This is what Merrill believes:
“I can hit anything.”
He said that a couple hours after reaching up to hit a 93 mph fastball at shoulder level, well above the strike zone, 420 feet to right-center field for a two-run homer in yesterday’s second inning.
A lil’ Merrill Madness. pic.twitter.com/MPUJyjs7UZ
— San Diego Padres (@Padres) August 2, 2026
Merrill pounced so aggressively, it was as if Giants pitcher Landon Roupp had yelled out he was going to throw the pitch exactly where he did.
“I watched the game,” Merrill said. “I saw him do it to somebody else, so I was just expecting something up. Especially after yesterday, I missed a lot of heaters up.”
And no one has to tell Merrill to swing.
Especially when his swing is right, he has the ability to do damage on pitches a lot of other players cannot.
He appears to have, along with the Padres hitting coaches, made himself right.
I wrote in last Monday’s newsletter about the changes Merrill has made.
While Merrill did not continue to slug during the six-game homestand the way he had on the previous road trip, he was still 8-for-23 (.348) with a double and a home run.
He is batting .317 with a .900 OPS in 107 plate appearances over the past month. That has his batting average up 18 points (to .237) and his OPS up 53 points (to .687) since July 3.
Tidbits
- Gavin Sheets started for the first time in four games yesterday and then departed Petco Park in a protective walking boot. He is dealing with plantar fasciitis in his right foot, and the boot allows him to rest the affected area on the bottom of his foot. Sheets played in right field and was 1-for-2 with a walk before being lifted for a pinch-runner after his single in the fifth inning.
- Manny Machado was 1-for-15 with a double, a walk and one RBI in the four games against the Giants. He entered the series having hit .326 with a 1.029 OPS over his previous 33 games.
- France was 2-for-4 yesterday and now ranks third on the team with 27 multi-hit games behind only Fernando Tatis Jr. (31) and Merrill (28). France has started 37 fewer games than Tatis and 36 fewer than Merrill.
- France has at least one hit in 18 of his 20 games since July 6 and leads the major leagues with a .413 batting average (31-for-75) in that span.
- Yesterday was Hart’s fourth time this season serving as an opener. He has allowed one run in 8⅔ innings in that role.
- With one victory in their remaining three-game set next month in San Francisco, the Padres will win the season series against the Giants for the sixth time in seven years. Their 60-37 record against them in that time is their eighth-best winning percentage (.619) against any team and their best against any NL West opponent. But in some ways, the dominance has been by the slimmest of margins. The teams have played 34 one-run games, with the Giants winning 18 of those.
- Luis Rengifo went 1-for-3 yesterday and for the second straight game was hit by a pitch and walked. He is batting .362 (17-for-47) with a .483 on-base percentage in 15 games with the Padres.
- Merrill also stole a base yesterday. His fourth game this season with a home run and a stolen base puts him one away from tying the franchise record held by 10 players. The last to accomplish it was Fernando Tatis Jr. in 2021.
- Merrill has 16 home runs and 22 stolen bases. The Yankees’ Jazz Chisholm (16 and 30) and Cubs’ Pete Crow-Armstrong (26 and 24) are the only players with at least that many of both.
- More Merrill? Yes. He almost had his fifth home run robbery of the season. He actually did have it, and then the wall jarred it loose. Said Merrill, who ran 112 feet to catch up to Osleivis Basabe’s drive: “That would have been cool. I went the whole way for it.”
BASABE DOES IT AGAIN 🤩 pic.twitter.com/VUlUFPiTtg
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) August 2, 2026
All right, that’s it for me. It’s trade deadline day. Oh, and a game tonight that could end with the Padres in playoff position.
And, yes, I wrote 2,500 words again. I can’t help myself once I get going.
Talk to you tomorrow.
