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Nick Pivetta threw a bullpen Saturday afternoon. The Padres have not announced what Joe Musgrove’s next step is, other than to reveal that they are considering shorter starts to help him ease past the elbow fatigue that’s slowed him following sharp rehab appearances.
So maybe, just maybe the Padres have options if their two newest starting pitchers continue to stumble.
On Saturday, Robbie Ray could not get out of the third inning, burying his team early in a 5-1 loss to the Yankees that again dropped the Padres below the postseason threshold in this seesaw, will-they-or-won’t-they race for the NL’s last wild-card spot.
With an extra-inning win in Houston, Arizona is back to a half-game up on the Padres with just over three weeks left in the season.
The Diamondbacks going 2-4 over the last week has been just enough to slip ahead of the Padres during a 3-8 slog since sweeping the Twins to start the previous homestand.
They haven’t won a series since then and managed just two singles outside Manny Machado’s fourth-inning homer in flushing whatever momentum that was captured by Luis Campusano’s walk-off home run on Friday night. “It’s baseball,” right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr.
said af ter going 0-for-3 with a walk.
“If we want to gain momentum, we just got to win more games.” An early hole made that difficult on Saturday as Ray exited to scattered boos throughout a Yankees-leaning, sellout crowd of 40,946 at Petco Park after 2⅓ wild innings in his shortest start yet since the trade deadline.
Free passes had been an issue in each of his first five starts (26 ⅓ IP, 16 walks), but he’d at least mostly negotiated the traffic to turn in serviceable starts before unraveling on Saturday.
The Padres’ pitching acquisitions, amid an MLB-best 21-7 run that began in late July, were supposed to buoy the team’s rise, but right-hander Casey Mize has a 6.67 ERA in his six starts since the trade deadline and Ray, after walking four on Saturday, has a 4.71 ERA in his six starts.
Padres baseball ops chief A.J.
Preller didn’t break the bank to add both to the rotation — combined, the two deals cost three top-30 organizational prospects in Kash Mayfield, Miguel Mendez and Joniel Hernandez — but he needs more than he’s getting to look back on the deals with any kind of fondness.
Either way, the additions were necessary to bridge the gap — pitching chaos couldn’t last forever, could i t? — until Pivetta and/or Musgrove could return in some capacity, however diminished they might be after both suffered setbacks after beginning rehab assignments in early August.
Instead of getting both back as full-fledged starters, the Padres are beginning to assess how either could help over the final three weeks of the season, whether they return as short-length starters, piggy-backers or relief arms.
Whatever the roster looks like, a sense of urgency figures to dictate more and more decisions as the finish line nears. “I mean that’s a lot of hypotheticals,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said.
“We’re not sure when they’re going to be here in the big leagues. So the current staff that we have, we’re going to manage it the same way that we would a lot of playoff games.
You know, where we’re going to be probably aggressive with taking the starter out of the game and using our bullpen that we feel is a strength of our team.” Ray’s trouble in the second inning followed a perfect first in which he threw seven of eight pitches for strikes.
But Ben Rice singled to start the inning, La Costa Canyon High’s Spencer Jones drove him in with a double and Ray walked the next three hitters to p rompt David Morgan to warm up in the bullpen. Cody Bellinger’s two-run single capped a four-run rally in Ray’s 42-pitch frame.
An inning later, Ray walked Rice to start the third, gave up a single to former Giants teammate Heliot Ramos, a sac fly to rookie George Lombard Jr. and was lifted after Jones’ second hit of the game.
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