Good morning,
The Padres last night played what might have been their best game of 2026.
That is a nearly impossible thing to quantify. But the point is they played the kind of game they absolutely needed to. It was, at least, the right type of effort for the moment.
You can read in my game story (here) about the 5-2 victory over the Braves how the Padres got one of their best outings from a starting pitcher in more than a month and scored in multiple ways over four consecutive innings to build a lead for a thin bullpen, which worked 3⅓ scoreless innings at the end.
“We played a lot of good baseball, a lot of good team baseball,” said Ty France, who homered, drove in a run with a sacrifice fly and scored after a double.
The victory completed a sweep of the team with the third-best record in the National League (and the major leagues).
The Braves are scuffling. They are missing some key pieces. The Padres did not face Chris Sale during the three games.
But that’s OK.
The Padres have faced their share of elite pitching, and they have faltered plenty against middling pitching.
Now, they have won three of their past five series and gone 9-6 in that span. This, after losing 11 of their previous 13 games.
The story of the game was that JP Sears was mostly magnificent over 5⅔ innings in his season debut, allowing two runs on his final pitch of the day. The takeaway from the day was that the offense continued its trend of being relentless. It is not great yet, not what it could be or even what it was for the majority of April.
But there are encouraging signs to be seen.
The Padres, who are off today before beginning a series against the Dodgers at Petco Park, finished with seven hits and six walks. They have reached base at least 11 times in 14 of their past 15 games after doing so four times in their previous 17 games.
They went just 2-for-11 with runners in scoring position yesterday, but they keep giving themselves abundant chances. They are 40-for-139 (.288) with runners in scoring position over the past 17 games after getting 11 hits in just 84 at-bats (.131) in that situation in 18 games before that.
“You’ve got to give a lot of credit to the guys in the lineup for sticking with it,” France said. “It’s been a grind to get to this point. Hopefully, we can just keep it going.”
Lift from Sears
In his first big-league start of the season, Sears was the pitcher the Padres needed.
The left-hander was an out away from completing what would have been just the third quality start by a Padres pitcher in three weeks and the first by someone other than Michael King.
As it was, Sears joined King (twice) and Walker Buehler (once) as the only Padres starters to go at least 5⅔ innings and allow fewer than three runs in the past 35 games.
“The way he threw the ball today is what he’s capable of doing in the big leagues and what he has shown he did in the big leagues before we traded for him,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said. “Exciting that he came up. We needed him big. He stepped up to the plate and just did an amazing job for us.”
Sears was acquired from the Athletics at the deadline last year. Mason Miller was far and away the only piece of that trade the Padres absolutely needed to work out. But they were looking for a contribution from Sears, who had a 4.55 ERA in 97 starts for the Yankees and Athletics.
They put him in their rotation right away but ended up sending him down three times between his five starts for them.
Sears allowed one run in six innings in his second Padres start and two runs in 5⅔ innings in the season finale.
In his other three starts, he allowed 13 runs in 13 innings.
He was ostensibly a part of the competition for a rotation spot this spring, but the Padres had signed Walker Buehler, Griffin Canning and Germán Márquez by Feb. 17.
Sears had a 7.92 ERA in 14 starts for Triple-A El Paso this season, a number people in the organization said was inflated due to the thin air and high altitude of the Pacific Coast League and some bad luck.
The Padres were desperate for Sears to be able to cover some innings when Lucas Giolito went on the injured list with elbow inflammation.
At least in his first start, Sears appeared to justify whatever faith the Padres had when they recalled him on Tuesday.
“I feel like there’s definitely some things that I battled with early on, as far as getting adjusted there and having some tough luck at times,” Sears said “But I learned a lot about myself there, learned about controlling what I can control.”
Until he left a changeup belt high for Joey Bart to launch to the second balcony of the Western Metal building for a two-run homer that got the Braves to 3-2 with two outs in the sixth inning, Sears was pretty near as sharp as he has ever been in a Padres uniform and about as good as any Padres starter has been for some time.
“It gives me a lot of confidence in my stuff and my ability to pitch here,” he said.
With the off day, the Padres have a number of ways they can go to fill out their starting rotation in the coming weeks. But yesterday’s outing makes it seem likely Sears will get the ball Monday or Tuesday against the Cubs.
Which day could depend on how the Padres proceed with Canning. They could call up Jhony Brito to start in Canning’s place or to be available as a long man.
The Padres did push back Randy Vásquez another day to Saturday against the Dodgers. That puts Walker Buehler back in his regular slot tomorrow and lines him up for his following start to be against the Cubs. Michael King remains Sunday’s starter in the series finale against the Dodgers.
Stepping up
The length Sears provided was so crucial because Canning got two outs instead of the 12 (at minimum) the Padres had hoped for on Tuesday, and that game going 10 innings meant the bullpen had to cover a full regular game’s worth of innings (plus one out).
Since a number of the six relievers who worked Tuesday had also pitched twice in the previous three days, the Padres were working with a skeleton crew yesterday.
“It wasn’t like, ‘Who are we going to use?’ It was like, ‘Who can we use out of the pen?’” Stammen said.
Ron Marinaccio was held back as the potential “designated survivor” in case the game went extra innings. The three other available relievers pitched after Sears. And they did their job.
David Morgan took over for Sears and got the next four outs before Wandy Peralta worked the eighth and Jason Adam the ninth.
“That’s the beauty of our bullpen,” Stammen said. “We’ve talked about it all year, how deep it is one through eight, and those guys proved it again in this series.”
Padres relievers have allowed two runs in 18⅔ innings over the past four games. And they have a 1.54 ERA in 64 innings over the past 15 games.
(Those numbers exclude what Canning and Giolito have done as bulk relievers and include what Peralta and Bradgley Rodriguez have done as openers.)
Getting it done
Samad Taylor laid down a pretty good bunt in the first inning, but Braves pitcher Martín Pérez made a better play, picking up the ball with his glove on the third base side in front of the mound, spinning and throwing to first base just in time.
After striking out his next time up, Taylor again bunted in the fifth inning to almost the exact spot as his first one. This time, a hurried Pérez lost the ball on the transfer from his glove to his hand.
“He made a nice play,” Taylor said of the first bunt. “I’m gonna try it again. Let’s see if he can do it two times in a row. I put a good bunt down, and he didn’t make the play. So it was a win for me.”
Taylor has squared to bunt at least once near the beginning of almost every plate appearance. Yesterday’s bunt single was his third, and he also has two sacrifice bunts. But the purpose in his commitment to showing bunt is broader than those results.
“It opens up holes,” Taylor said. “It brings the third baseman in, brings the first baseman in. Now maybe you get a little bloop base hit. Or you get jammed or fisted or something, and it might be over their head. It moves the defense around.”
In the sixth inning, Taylor showed another ability he has when he poked a single into right field off the end of his bat on a 2-2 slider from Tyler Kinley. Taylor is batting .243 (9-for-37) with two strikes, 76 points higher than the MLB average.
Taylor, who was called up from Triple-A on June 3, has at least one hit in all but one of his 15 starts and has at least one run or RBI in 12 of the 15 starts.
Pitchers’ progress
There were some significant developments yesterday afternoon at Petco Park that don’t actually mean anything just yet.
Joe Musgrove threw off the front slope of the mound in the bullpen, and Nick Pivetta threw a light bullpen session for the second time.
This is merely confirmation of what we have talked about — that the two veteran starting pitchers are on track for a return after the All-Star break.
Pivetta could conceivably be back pitching for the Padres in late July. Musgrove is likely at least a couple weeks behind that. But those familiar with the process stress the timelines are fluid based on how the pitchers feel as they take each step.
Pivetta, who was shut down during his fourth start of the season with what the team has called a right elbow flexor strain, threw in the bullpen for the first time Sunday in Texas. He called yesterday, “A good day on the mound.”
He is not throwing with anything like maximum effort but is building up.
“It’s what my body allows me to get into,” he said. “Today was good.”
Musgrove, who is coming off Tommy John surgery and dealing with the effects of erosion of the cartilage in his elbow, described his move to the front slope of the mound as giving his arm a chance to adjust.
“We’re going to be off the mound within the next couple weeks,” he said. “So we’re just introducing it slowly.”
Streaking
Maybe it wasn’t all that impressive that the Padres swept the Braves.
They always sweep the Braves at Petco Park. Or they have in three consecutive series (nine games) since the 2024 National League Wild Card Series.
“They’re definitely a good team,” Stammen said. “They’re also missing a few of their stud players, and we didn’t face their ace either. … So, you get them in a playoff series, things are always going to be different with something like that. But it’s a team — similar to how we’ve played the Phillies, we’ve always struggled with the Phillies — the Braves have struggled with us. It’s funny how baseball just kind of keeps repeating itself over and over and over again, but such is the way it goes sometimes. We’ll take a three-game sweep anytime we can get one.”
The Padres play four games in Atlanta next month. The Braves might have Ronald Acuña Jr. back by then but will still be without starting pitchers Spencer Strider and Spencer Schwellenbach, among others.
Here is an updated look at the chart from yesterday’s newsletter showing how the Padres have not been all that good against the National League’s best teams (except one):
Tidbits
- Adam’s 1-2-3 ninth inning was his first clean outing since May 27. He had allowed at least one baserunner in 12 consecutive appearances and had a 6.75 ERA over his previous nine outings. I wrote in Monday’s newsletter about what Adam is working through. The 34-year-old right-hander still has the lowest ERA (1.85) among qualifying relievers in 124 appearances since the Padres acquired him at the trade deadline in 2024.
- The Padres are 27-9 when they score first. That is the third-best record in the major leagues. The 36 times they have scored first are tied for sixth fewest in MLB.
- Xander Bogaerts was 2-for-4 yesterday and has reached base in 15 of his 30 plate appearances over his past seven games.
- Yesterday was France’s fifth game this season with multiple extra-base hits. Manny Machado (six) is the only Padres player with more.
- A little luck and a lot of speed got Jase Bowen his first career extra-base hit on a broken-bat blooper to right field. Bowen is fast. If only he could get on base more. He is 4-for-30 with two walks. That’s a .188 on-base percentage.
- Sears was the first left-handed starting pitcher used by the Padres this season. (That excludes Peralta, who has served as an opener three times.) The only time in the past 11 seasons the Padres went this far into a season without a lefty as part of their rotation was in 2024. The first lefty to start for them that season was Pérez (the Braves’ starter yesterday) after he was acquired at the trade deadline.
All right, that’s it for me.
No game today, so no newsletter tomorrow.
Jeff Sanders will have a story on our Padres page later today talking about the significance of this stretch of games leading up to the All-Star break.
The next Padres Daily will be in your inbox on Saturday morning.
