Good morning from San Francisco,
The Padres were not happy after last night’s loss.
Jason Adam was particularly glum.
“Everybody that played tonight did what they needed to do to come out on top, except for me, really,” Adam said.
You can read the entirety of that quote and others from Adam and his teammates in my game story (here) about last night’s 6-5 loss to the Giants in which the Padres surrendered a five-run lead.
Taking a step back, though, the truth is the Padres knew they had pulled a heist by winning the first two games of the series after not scoring in the first eight innings of either.
This is how baseball often works. Things don’t always even out. But they seem to do so an awful lot.
And for entertainment value, this series has been sensational.
“Really good baseball,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said. “We came back two times, they came back tonight. That’s as good of baseball games as you’re going to see.”
There is something about this place for the Padres.
Of the 42 games they have played at Oracle Park since the start of the 2020 season, 20 have been decided by one run. The Padres are 11-9 in those games.
(For comparison, eight of the 37 games the Padres and Giants have played at Petco Park since 2020 have come down to a single run.)
Going back just to the beginning of 2023, nine of the past 16 games between the two teams here have been decided by runs scored in the eighth inning or later. That includes five extra-inning games, four of them won by the Padres.
Who knows what is in store for today.
You would think that in order to win their fourth consecutive series the Padres will have to figure out a way to hit Giants starter Robbie Ray, who was the National League Pitcher of the Month in May and has a 1.57 ERA and has held opponents to a .176 batting average over his past seven starts dating to April 26.
Then again, maybe the Padres’ recipe for victory here is to wait until the end to score.
He’s back?
I wrote (here) yesterday afternoon about Tatis’ frustration as he worked to emerge from a monthlong funk at the plate and his efforts to be a good teammate even while tormented by his struggles.
I hope you read the story for Tatis’ heartfelt quotes, which offer a glimpse into why he wears his slumps so heavily.
The last two games have provided glimpses of early season Tatis.
“Yeah, definitely,” Tatis said late last night.
He was 3-for-5 with a double in last night’s game after going 1-for-3 with two walks on Tuesday. He has also hit one ball each night that Giants center fielder Jung Hoo Lee ran down — a 111 mph line drive leading off Tuesday’s game that had 73% hit probability and a 106 mph drive with a 72% hit probability that Lee got to with a sliding catch in last night’s second inning.
“I’m just figuring out what I was doing wrong and just relaxing a little more,” said Tatis, who has felt off with his timing for several weeks. “… There is never a special recipe for this (stuff). Just trying to figure it out.”
Slipped away
It sure seemed Nick Pivetta was on his way to his fourth consecutive excellent start.
Then it fell apart.
You can read about that in the game story, along with a quote from Pivetta.
In short, he left one sweeper and one curveball in the middle of the zone, and both were hit a long way and drove in runs. And he was victimized by a couple balls flared into the outfield.
Pivetta is a man of few words, and almost none of those words are ever expended making excuses.
“That’s part of baseball,” he said of a broken-bat single in the fifth and a pop fly double in the sixth, both of which led to runs. “And even when I make my pitches, it’s about, ‘What am I going to do after that?’ And I wasn’t able to execute on those pitches after that, and I kind of got burned. Well, I did get burned for that.”
Pivetta’s 3.16 ERA is still his lowest through the first 12 starts of any of the eight seasons in which he has made that many.
Sheets keeps producing
Gavin Sheets emerged from the training room last night with a large ice pack taped to his hip.
That is the part of his body that took the brunt of the impact when he ran into the left field wall at Petco Park on Sunday.
But he was back in the starting lineup for the second straight night, this time playing first base after serving as the designated hiiter on Tuesday. And showed he is fine. Or fine enough.
The first of his two hits last night was a first-inning triple that hit high on the tall brick wall and bounced back on the grass far enough that he was able to get to third base standing up.
Triples is best.
⭐️: https://t.co/EMce6sZBBP pic.twitter.com/8eOkHuZDGq
— San Diego Padres (@Padres) June 5, 2025
That ed for the first two of his four RBIs.
He also drove in two runs with a fifth-inning single on a line drive that bounced off Giants pitcher Kyle Harrison’s arm.
It was Sheets’ fourth game this season with at least four RBIs. He leads the Padres with 38 total RBIs and is tied with Tatis and Jackson Merrill for second with eight go-ahead RBIs (behind Manny Machado’s 10).
“It still sucks,” Sheets said. “Obviously, I would say good game personally. But winning trumps all. Going 0-for-4 and winning, it still feels better.”
Bogaerts departs
Xander Bogaerts was replaced at shortstop by Jose Iglesias in the sixth inning due to what was described as a “sore” shoulder.
“I’ve been having it a couple days now,” Bogaerts said.
He did not recall a specific incident but said the level of discomfort was “pretty high” when swinging a bat.
Bogaerts missed almost two months from mid-May to mid-July last season with a fractured left shoulder. He hit .299 with a .770 OPS in 64 games after returning.
“We’ll see how it goes,” he said. “I normally heal quick. Hopefully, a couple days or so.”
Tidbits
- There have been 14 infield hits in the three games in this series. The Padres have 10 of those.
- Tatis moved into the team lead with his 12th stolen base. It was his sixth steal of third base, which is tied for second most in the major leagues.
- Elias Díaz was 1-for-4 last night, raising his batting average a point to .214. He also struck out twice and has 14 strikeouts in his past 36 at-bats.
- Jake Cronenworth was 2-for-3 with a walk last night and is batting .256 (10-for-39) with a .388 on-base percentage while reaching base in 11 of his past 12 games.
- Starting pitcher Yu Darvish will return to San Diego instead of ing the team in Milwaukee for the three games that will conclude this trip. He plans to throw a bullpen session at Petco Park tomorrow or Saturday. It will be his third bullpen in a week, and the Padres expect to have more clarity about his potential return afterward. Darvish was shut down in mid-March with elbow inflammation. Said manager Mike Shildt: “All favorable and trending in a good place.”
- Luis Arraez served as the Padres’ designated hitter last night. It was the fourth time in the past seven games that a position player got what is often referred to as a half-day off. It is part of the effort to keep guys as fresh as possible during this stretch of 26 games in 27 days.
- The Padres had 12 hits last night after getting 10 on Tuesday. They are batting .286 in the two games after batting .207 in their previous 20 games.
All right, that’s it for me. Early game today (12:45 p.m. PT) and then a flight to Milwaukee.
Talk to you tomorrow.
