Padres Daily: Nothing doing at the start (or at any point in this one)

Good morning,

The Padres lost 6-0 to the Cardinals last night in one of the strangest pitchers' duels you might ever see.

All six runs were scored in the fifth inning. All were earned. All were charged to Griffin Canning. Yet he couldn't be upset about too many of his pitches.

To that point, Canning was handling the Cardinals with relative ease. He had allowed two hits (both singles to Ivan Herrera). The Cardinals had hit four balls hard.

In the fifth, they got another hard single. Then they got an infield single on a chopped grounder to the right side that probably would have been an out had Canning not been late getting off the mound to cover first base. After a strikeout, Canning walked a batter to load the bases.

Then JJ Wetherholt hit a grounder through the right side that rolled into the outfield, under Fernando Tatis Jr.'s glove and all the way to the wall. That allowed Wetherholt to sprint around the bases on a single (plus a three-base error).

Another infield single, a double just fair down the left field line and a walk loaded the bases again and ended Canning's night. Two of the runners left to Yuki Matsui scored.

You can read more about that play in my game story (here).

The main focus of that story was the offense.

Again.

Because the Padres got one hit, a single by Jackson Merrill leading off the bottom of the fourth inning. That was followed by a pair of two-out walks by Gavin Sheets and Tatis.

That was it for the Padres on offense.

Xander Bogaerts made a throwing error later, so the Padres ended up with more errors than hits. Or one more baserunner than errors. Whichever one depresses you less.

The Padres are 22-16, good enough for them to hold the second wild-card spot with just 124 games remaining.

That is a lot of time for them to get better.

Or for their hot start to be exposed as bogus if their offense continues to be as inept as it has been for large portions of this season.

Slugging, while not a strength by any means, is no longer their biggest albatross as a group. Their .373 slugging percentage is just eighth worst in the major leagues.

Their .227 batting average is second-to-last and their .299 on-base percentage is third worst.

The Padres keep talking about their hard hits and their good at-bats.

And in the fourth inning last night, Tatis worked a brilliant walk after falling behind 0-2. The Padres made Cardinals starter Michael McGreevy throw 26 pitches in that inning.

That sort of inning has led to them capitalizing later against starters in some games. But the Cardinals' six-run burst came immediately after Miguel Andujar hit a groundball to shortstop that ended the Padres' fourth-inning rally, and the game was effectively over.

And, for the record, the Padres' two balls in play at 100 mph or harder last night tied for their fewest in a game this season.

Just as was happening in the first week of the season, the Padres are simply not stringing enough good at-bats together. Actually, they are doing it even less over the past 10 days than they were back at the end of March and first few days of April.

"It’s a team game and an individual concept," manager Craig Stammen said. "Those guys individually have got to be dialed in on where their swing is and what their approach is, and then as a team they’ve got to come together. We’ve got to come together and collectively compete every at-bat and try to put at-bat after at-bat after at-bat together - like what we talked about earlier in the season is passing the baton to each other, trusting the next guy."

We always seek perspective in the Padres Daily. So …

The last time the Padres' batting average was this low after 38 games was 2022, when they were also hitting .227 as a team.

Their slugging percentage (.354) and OPS (.664) were lower 38 games into that season than they are now.

The Padres finished that season ranked 16th in average and 15th in OPS and advanced to the National League Championship Series.

This lineup is deeper than that lineup was. That lineup had almost-peak Manny Machado, almost-peak Jake Cronenworth and above-average Jurickson Profar.

Cronenworth was having his worst start to a season before going on the injured list with a concussion, Profar is gone and Machado is batting .195/.305/.344.

Those are all Machado's worst season-opening numbers (through 36 games) since 2014.

You may have also heard that Tatis has yet to hit a home run and is batting .248 with a .617 OPS. That is an astonishing 163 points below his worst previous 37-game start to a season.

It is difficult to expect too much of a team when its two best players are hitting like utility infielders from the 1980s.

Slow starts

It is also difficult to expect too much from a team that has gone six scoreless innings at the start of more than 20% of its games.

The Padres are a resilient bunch. That has been established.

Half of their 22 victories have come in games in which the deciding run was scored in the seventh inning or later. They have come back to win an MLB-high six games in which they trailed by three runs or more.

But they are also 3-13 in games they have trailed after six innings.

Why are they trailing after six innings so often? Yes, their starting pitchers have put them in some big holes a few times. But their early-game troubles mainly are because they are averaging 2.47 runs in the first six innings of games, 24th in the major leagues.

McGreevy last night threw the 19th quality start against the Padres.

No team is getting hamstrung at the beginning of games like they are.

The Giants, who have scored fewer runs than any team in the major leagues, have had 16 quality starts thrown against them. The Reds, the only team with a lower batting average than the Padres, have had 17 thrown against them.

The Padres have gone 7-12 in games in which the opposing starting pitcher goes at least six innings and allows no more than three earned runs. They have hardly made some of those starting pitchers work. They have gotten others out of the game in time to have a chance against a bullpen.

They are an aggressive team. When that approach works, it looks like them scoring five runs on 21 pitches against Logan Webb in the fourth inning Tuesday. When it doesn't work, it looks like Trevor McDonald throwing 81 pitches in seven innings on Monday.

It has been documented plenty in this space that the Padres have faced some really good pitchers. But the fact is, just seven of those pitchers who have dealt quality starts against the Padres have an ERA under 4.00 this season.

This is not so much about the opposing pitchers as it is a Padres problem - in preparation or execution or both.

"We’ve got to come in with the game plan and then stick to it and try to execute that game plan," Stammen said. "You know, first hitter to the ninth hitter for as long as (the starter) is in the game. And I just think there’s been breaks in that - different players at different times. Just giving in maybe a little too early, or being slightly more aggressive than we should or not aggressive enough. I mean, you could argue all of that stuff.

"But we’ll get after it. These guys are good hitters. They’re going to figure it out. We’re going to figure it out together. And we’ll be talking about this time in the season as a growth point, facing adversity and us being able to stack a brick to build for a run in the postseason."

No difference

The Padres' have scored 163 runs and allowed 163 runs this season.

There have been, in the history of the game, five other teams with a record as good as the Padres and a run differential of zero or worse.

Tidbits

• Merrill's single extended his on-base streak to eight games, during which he is batting .323 with a .382 OBP.
• Matsui made his season debut after being activated off the injured list (adductor strain) on Tuesday. The left-hander worked a career-high 2⅔ innings. He struck out two, surrendered three hits and walked one.
• A night after throwing just four strikes among his 14 pitches, Wandy Peralta threw nothing but strikes in a seven-pitch inning last night. It was his fourth consecutive scoreless outing (4⅔ total innings).
• This is not the solution. But the promotion of Jase Bowen might be nearing. Bowen hit his ninth and 10th home runs last night. Sure, it's the Pacific Coast League. But he has legit power, runs fast and plays adept outfield. Bryce Johnson is a winning piece, and the Padres risk losing him because he cannot be optioned to the minor leagues. But he is the least-used player on the roster because he is a defensive replacement, does not slug and can't pinch-run for runners who aren't on base.
• You can read a story by Jeff Sanders and Alex Riggins (here) about Padres minor-leaguer Humberto Cruz, who was considered among the team's top pitching prospects before being arrested and deported to Mexico following his arrest in Arizona for transporting undocumented immigrants into the United States.
• I wrote in yesterday's newsletter that the Padres had three hits on Thursday night. They had four. My bad. I mean, their bad too. But I have to be accountable for my mistakes as well.

All right, that's it for me.

I also have to be accountable to my wife. And she did such a remarkable job raising our kids and me that I feel compelled to celebrate Mothers Day. We will do so today. So no newsletter tomorrow.

Jeff Sanders will have coverage of today's game on our Padres page.

The next newsletter will arrive in your inbox Monday morning.

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This story was originally published May 9, 2026 at 6:57 AM.