Padres Daily: Awfully awesome; Musgrove, Pivetta getting more active; Merrill gladness

Good morning,

It might have been the most paradoxical game of baseball ever played.

Probably not. Baseball has been around a long time, and such a thing is in the eye of the beholder.

But what happened at Petco Park last night was so bad, and it was so good.

If you missed it, just picture a Little League game but with excellent defense.

"It was a weird game," Ty France said, "just all around."

Yes, the Padres' 2-0 victory over the Athletics was awfully awesome.

The Padres scored their first run without getting a hit - on three walks and a hit batter. Their second run came on a walk, a double and a groundout.

They finished with two hits, three fewer than the Athletics.

There were 14 walks in all, 11 of them before an out was made in the fourth inning. A dozen of the first 34 batters walked.

But without all that, we would not have been treated to Ty France's double-play trifecta or the back end of the Padres' bullpen working exactly how it is supposed to.

You can read Jeff Sanders' game story (here) about how it went down and what Lucas Giolito said regarding his lack of command and how grateful he was for France, his old travel ball teammate.

France executed two double plays on his own and started and finished another one.

With a runner on first and no outs in the top of the third inning, the Padres' first baseman fielded a grounder and tagged the runner in front of him before stepping on the bag. He then caught a pop-up for the third out.

With one out and runners on first and second in the fourth, France fielded a grounder, turned and threw to second base and then raced to first to receive the throw back from shortstop Sung-Mun Song to get Giolito out of another jam.

And with a runner on first with no outs in the fifth, France caught a line drive essentially right above the bag and stepped on it for the double play. After a single, France caught a pop-up for the third out.

"Definitely busy," France said. "I jokingly told Gio that I was gonna put an invoice in his locker for all the action he got me tonight."

Craig Stammen's favorite double play was the middle one, which ended the biggest threat against Giolito

"I told him he was Steph Curry shooting a 3 - where he caught it, threw it to first without looking and got back to the bag," Stammen said.

It could have been so much worse for both starting pitchers.

There has to be some measure of respect for guys who can walk 11 batters in their combined 7⅓ innings and allow a total of two runs.

It has been a weird week for both of them.

Giolito made his season debut a week ago and is 2-0 in two starts for the Padres despite having walked eight batters in 10 innings.

Athletics starter J.T. Ginn, who in his previous start on Monday in Anaheim had a no-hitter going before allowing a single and a walk-off home run to the only two batters he faced in the ninth inning, did not allow a hit last night.

The lines for last night's two starting pitchers:

Speaking of starting pitchers

Joe Musgrove and Nick Pivetta are progressing beyond the "active rest" stage.

They have both increased their activity, and Musgrove plans to play catch next week.

"Probably a little further (behind) Joe," Pivetta said of his target date for throwing again.

The two veteran right-handers were expected to be anchors for the rotation this season but have been sidelined by elbow issues.

Musgrove, who had Tommy John surgery in October 2024, was shut down in spring training due to discomfort in his elbow related to his recovery. Pivetta left his fourth start of the season, and the team has called his injury a right elbow flexor strain.

It is too early to put a timeline on when either pitcher will return, but the hope is that they are ready to contribute sometime in late summer.

Pivetta said he feels like he could throw now but that he does not want to "ramp up" too early "so I don’t have to go back on the IL."

Musgrove stressed the importance of giving the rehab process "the right amount of time to get right" so that when they come back they can help a team in a playoff chase.

"The mindset is there," Pivetta said. "It’s just whatever my body is gonna allow me to feel. I feel good. I’ve been feeling good throughout the rehab process. I haven’t had any setbacks, which has been really nice. My strength has always been there, which has been good. It’s just slow playing the throwing part. I think it’s probably the best thing to make sure that I’m just fully back, because when I come back and I start throwing, it’s going to be to come back with a purpose and to make sure that I’m pitching to the ability I always have."

Merrill gladness

Whatever fluctuations in his plate discipline, whatever mechanical issues and alterations, multiple people in the organization have opined recently that Jackson Merrill's biggest problem had become that his frustration was weighing him down.

Merrill seems to agree.

"I just need to relax, enjoy the ride, realize it's a game with your brothers and have fun," he said last night. "I think I lost a little bit of that track. I need to have fun."

Merrill spoke after walking, stealing second base and scoring the Padres' first run and then hitting a double that helped create their other run in his return to the lineup.

He left Wednesday's game four innings after banging into the wall trying to rob Shohei Ohtani of a home run and sat out Friday with what he said was soreness in his "ribs and back area."

His double last night followed a walk by Nick Castellanos and moved Castellanos into position to score on a groundout by France.

Even in his struggling at the plate, Merrill is one of six players in the major leagues with 10 doubles and 10 steals.

Like they planned

Last night was just the second time the Padres' four primary high-leverage relievers worked in the same game and the first time they did so by pitching one inning apiece.

Jeremiah Estrada faced four batters in the sixth, Adrian Morejón three batters in the seventh, Jason Adam four in the eighth and Mason Miller three in the ninth as he pitched against his former team for the first time.

Adam has not allowed a run over his past 9⅔ innings (10 appearances). Since allowing his only two runs of the season on April 27, Miller has thrown 9⅓ scoreless innings in nine games. Morejón extended his scoreless streak to 5⅔ innings over six appearances. Estrada has allowed one run in his past seven outings (seven innings).

Short on action

In his first ever professional game at shortstop, on May 6 in San Francisco, Song had one assist on a grounder hit his way. When he played two innings there on May 14, he got no balls hit his way. Last night, in his second start at shortstop, the relay on the double play was his only action.

"I don't get any ground balls when I am playing shortstop," he said through interpreter Juneseo Yi. "I don't feel like I did anything today."

Primarily a third baseman in the Korean Baseball Organization before signing with the Padres in the offseason, Song has played 10 games (five starts) at second base and one inning at third base since his May 6 callup.

Really good, right?

There was an exercise some people in the Padres organization would do from time to time, back around 2018 and ’19, to illustrate how their team stacked up against its opponents on a given night.

They would go position by position and compare. Almost never did the Padres have the better team on paper.

Things have changed. The Padres have made the postseason four of the past six seasons and are winning as much as almost any team this year.

Yet, just looking at performance this season, justifying the Padres as the better group of position players when compared to most of their opponents would be difficult to do.

Let’s take this series against the Athletics:

For this exercise, I took every player's numbers at the start of the series. I also with Sheets at first base, Fernando Tatis Jr. at second base, Ramón Laureano in left field and Castellanos in right.

It really didn't matter. However their lineup was configured, the Padres were going to end up "better" at four spots to the Athletics’ five.

This is not how it should be. The Athletics are a rising young team. But the Padres should have the edge at two more positions. And they are the two guys we have discussed ad nauseum over the past few weeks.

Walking away

Last night was the first time this season the Padres won a game in which they had fewer than four hits.

It was the first time since 2017 a Padres team won a game in which it had two or fewer hits. And it was just the 15th victory in the 156 games in franchise history in which the Padres have had two or fewer hits.

"It was a very unexpected way that game went," Stammen said.

Yeah, but last night was in a way the most perfect 2026 Padres victory.

The Padres have Major League Baseball's fifth-best record (31-20) and its lowest batting average (.219).

Batting average may not be the way the cool analytics kids measure offense. But it says something that there has never been another team that had a batting average as low as .219 and more than 29 victories 51 games into a season. Ever.

What it says, well, let's leave that alone for one day.

There is so much angst to be felt regarding the Padres' offense.

Let's appreciate for just a few hours what happened in a uniquely strange game.

Tidbits

• Sheets had the Padres' other hit last night. He has reached base in all but three of his 18 starts this month and is batting .286/.412/.571 in 68 plate appearances in May.
• Miguel Andujar is 1-for-12 over the past three games. He is chasing pitches outside the zone at a 63% rate over those three games compared with his 39% rate before that. One thing to keep an eye on is that Andujar's .381 batting average on balls in play before this three-game stretch was 100 points higher than the MLB average.
• Freddy Fermin is 0-for-4 with three walks in his past two games after reaching base twice (2-for-19) in his previous six starts.
• After walking in the first inning and being hit by a pitch and bringing in a run in the second inning, Tatis struck out and grounded out his final two times to the plate. He has struck out and/or grounded out at least once in 19 consecutive games, and 45 of his 79 plate appearances (57%) in that stretch have ended in a strikeout or groundout. He is batting .186 with a .278 on-base percentage in those 19 games.
• The Padres were 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position last night, the fourth time in their past five games they have gone hitless in that circumstance. They are 2-for-18 with runners in scoring position in that span.

All right, that's it for me. Early game (1:10 p.m. PT) today.

No newsletter tomorrow. The holiday morning is a good day to skip, so I can get home between the two afternoon games and have a conversation with my wife. I'm pretty sure it was April when we were last home at the same time. She might like to have a conversation with me. I guess I will find out.

We will have the usual game coverage on our Padres page today.

The next newsletter will be in your inbox Tuesday morning. Talk to you then.

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This story was originally published May 24, 2026 at 7:10 AM.