Good morning,
Mike Shildt got to break out one of his favorite expressions one game into the season, and he did not waste any time doing so.
“Grit Squad was on display,” he said, exactly 2.1 seconds into his first answer in his first postgame news conference of the season.
It was impossible to begrudge him his folksy phrase on this day. If there were a game conjured up in Shildt’s fantasies, it might look a lot like the Padres’ 7-4 victory over the Braves yesterday.
You can read in my game story (here) about the big days from Manny Machado, Jackson Merrill, Gavin Sheets and Fernando Tatis Jr. and how the victory was reminiscent of so many games the Padres won in 2024.
They stole five bases, drove in three runs with outs (two on sacrifice flies), moved a runner into scoring position with a sacrifice bunt, got a pinch-hit home run and lined balls all over the field.
“We create an identity of how we want to play and compete,” Shildt said. “… It was on display today. A lot of the good factors that make up a really special group. And that is resiliency, competition, but also the fact that we are ready for any and every situation to go compete and put our best foot forward over nine innings.”
It is difficult to know with certainty which inning made Shildt happier — the first or the third or the seventh.
Those are the three innings in which the Padres came back from being a run down.
Let’s rank them here:
The first. We’re going to give this the nod, because it set a tone and established that reigning National League Cy Young winner Chris Sale was hittable.
“I have a super long first inning, and I’m sitting in there and hoping that we have a lot of bottom half so I can catch my breath,” said Michael King, who allowed a run on a single, two walks and a wild pitch. “And all of a sudden we have a lead. He’s an elite pitcher. He was up to 98 (mph). It was his best stuff, and we still grinded him out and definitely got to him in those five innings.”
Sale ended up throwing 84 pitches in his five innings, allowing three runs and six hits, walking one and striking out seven.
Staked a 1-0 lead, he took 29 pitches to get through the bottom of the first inning and trailed 2-1 when it was finished.
Tatis led off with a single through the right side and went to second when Luis Arraez grounded out on the eighth pitch of his at-bat. Machado followed with a walk, during which Tatis stole third. And with two outs and behind 1-2, Merrill tracked a slider that broke in toward his knees and reached down to effectively slap the ball to the center field grass to drive in two runs.
“Gnarly,” Merrill said of falling behind 0-2 against Sale. “There’s an approach you can have with him, meaning trying to get a base hit to the opposite side. Two strikes, it’s a hittable pitch, I’m just trying to put bat on the ball. … What else do you expect? It’s Chris Sale. You get down 0-2. I wasn’t surprised by it. I wasn’t stressing over it. I got down 0-2. I was like, ‘Fine. I got one more.’”
The seventh. Pretty big, too, since it took the Padres from down 4-3 to up 7-4.
How it got started was fairly straightforward. Sheets, a left-handed batter, pinch-hit for left fielder Brandon Lockridge, against right-hander Hector Neris. And on the seventh pitch of his at-bat, he sent a 93.5 mph fastball up and in on the corner of the strike zone 405 feet to center field.
Watch video of Sheets’ homer here.
Catcher Elías Diaz followed with the second of his two singles. Jason Heyward pinch-ran for Diaz and took off on a 3-2 pitch that Tatis hit up the middle on a line to put men at first and third. Arraez hit a sacrifice fly to right field off left-handed reliever Aaron Bummer to give the Padres a lead. Machado then grounded a ball inside the bag at third for a double that scored Tatis, who had gone to second on a wild pitch and third base on Arraez’s sacrifice. And after Xander Bogaerts walked, he became the back end of a double steal.
“Lefty on (the mound), the third baseman playing off the bag,” Machado said. “It’s a tough throw for the catcher, and it’s a tough catch, as well, for the third baseman on the run. Trying to move some runners, get closer to home plate. It’s a tough at-bat, lefty on lefty. Just trying to get a runner in scoring position with two guys. It helped out big time.”
Yes, it did. Because two pitches later, Merrill sent a fly ball to right field that scored Machado.
The third. The Padres tied the game 3-3 on Machado’s double, Bogaerts’ single and a groundout by Merrill.
Obviously, the run doesn’t happen without Machado’s extra-base hit. But it was the at-bats by Bogaerts and Merrill and a dash home by Machado that made the inning.
Bogaerts went down 0-2 before watching a ball in the dirt and then fouling off a filthy slider that broke just below the zone. He grounded the next pitch, a 93.5 mph fastball at the top of the zone, through the left side to move Machado over.
Merrill then grounded a single down the first base line that Matt Olson fell on at the bag, and Machado, running on contact, reached the plate ahead of a wild throw.
“We can hit all we want, and we like the homers,” Shildt said. “Obviously, Sheets was a big blow. But, you know, we’ve got to score when we get on base. So our base running matches our offense, and our identity is to be a machine with our base running. And everybody was on point with everything we did today.”
Fernando flying again?
There was a lot of talk in spring about Tatis being healthy for the first time in a while, how his confidence was brimming and his swing was locked in.
He began the season with a single on the ground to right, a 112 mph single off the wall in left field and a line drive single to center field while going 3-for-4. Just as impressively — maybe more so, considering he had never done it twice in a game before — was that he stole third base in the first and fifth innings.
“I really missed it,” Tatis said of running aggressively. “Really happy where I’m at and happy I’m capable of doing it again. … It’s a huge part of my game. It’s one of my favorite parts of the game. So I really missed it.”
Tatis reached 50 career home runs and 50 career stolen bases in 224 games, faster than any player in history. (He had 69 home runs at the time.) And in 285 games between then and the end of last season, he had 42 steals.
After reaching 50 career steals on July 22, 2021, he was 2-for-4 on steal attempts the rest of that season while he nursed a torn labrum in his shoulder. He did not play in 2022 due to injury and suspension and stole 29 bases in 33 attempts while essentially still wroking back into shape in ‘23. Last season, he swiped just 11 bags in 14 tries as he was hampered a good portion of the 102 games he played by a stress reaction in his right femur.
“Last year I was standing on one leg,” he said. “… But you can really see how healthy I’m at right now.”
Lineup
Not to ruin it for you, but the last line of Tom Krasovic’s column from yesterday (here) is this:
“Baseball is back, and so is Tatis.”
It was a good rundown by a guy who really knows baseball.
In the column, Kras touched on Tatis batting first and noted he will probably be atop the lineup when the Padres face a left-handed starter.
That does seem to be the case.
Shildt likes giving an “extra at-bat” to a right-handed hitter while having Arraez bat second.
Arraez joked, “If Tati hit lead-off all year, I’d have 100 RBIs.”
Tatis is now a .311 hitter in the lead-off spot.
“The thing about where Tati hits,” Shildt said last week, “you almost want to hit him anywhere, because he profiles anywhere in the lineup.”
He’ll take it
Machado was shocked his steal of third stood and wondered why the Braves did not challenge.
He made an excellent feet-first slide to the side of the bag to avoid the tag by Riley. But with Riley’s glove still on him, Machado slid past the base before reaching out to grab it.
“I thought I was out,” Machado said. “… I thought I came off a little bit. My foot came off the bag. It slid off. Whatever. It was a bag for me. So I’ll take it. I got two now.”
Getting it
The Padres caught two balls at the wall that may or may not have been home runs but were nice plays nonetheless.
The way Lockridge and Merrill tracked their balls was most impressive.
Lockridge made the third out in the fourth inning by jumping to catch a ball in front of the short wall in the left field corner. That one was probably going to be Ozzie Albies’ second home run of the game, given the height of the wall. But after running 91 feet, Lockridge made a relatively routine catch.
“Definitely the easiest robbery I’ve ever had,” Lockridge said.
Here is a video of Lockridge’s grab.
The ball Merrill leaped to catch for the second out of the fifth inning was going to fall short of the wall. But he made a nice leap after running 91 feet straight back and turning toward the plate as he made the catch.
“I think it’s top of the wall,” Merrill said of where he believed the ball would have hit had he not been there. “It was too close, and Petco is too weird for me to not try to rob it. Sometimes the ball flies to center in the daytime. In my mind, day game, I gotta get up there. And then it just came to me.”
See video of Merrill’s catch here.
Maintaining
I wrote last week (here) that in just about every comeback victory, there is a reliever or two or five on the winning team who kept the game from getting out of hand after that team fell behind.
And so it was yesterday.
After King departed with two outs in the third, six relievers shut down the Braves.
Alek Jacob, who stranded the two runners he inherited from King, did allow a solo homer with two outs in the fourth that gave the Braves a 4-3 lead. But Yuki Matsui, Jeremiah Estrada, Wandy Peralta, Jason Adam and Robert Suarez worked a combined 5⅓ scoreless innings.
“Unsung heroes,” Shildt said. “Good teams have guys when you’re down (that) keep it right there. The bullpen was tremendous.”
Not anymore
Home plate umpire Adrian Johnson missed some crucial calls for pitchers on both sides.
On the first of those, a sinker in the heart of the strike zone, Merrill was momentarily confused as to why no one challenged the ball call.
“The second pitch of the game, Mike throws it, and it’s right down the middle and I’m like. …”
Merrill went on to pat his head, which is the signal players used all spring to challenge ball and strike calls as MLB tested out the ABS system. He quickly remembered the challenge system is not being used in the regular season.
King declined comment on the calls Johnson missed, even though he did have words with the umpire a couple times during the game.
“When you’re missing so badly, it’s really hard to then beg for strikes,” King said. “That’s how it is. If I was around the zone, I feel like I’m getting those pitches a lot more frequently than when I’m spraying it and then all of a sudden I throw a good one. It’s my fault.”
Answering the bell
Dylan Cease starts tonight.
If this season is like the past four, he will make 31 or 32 more by October.
No pitcher in the major leagues has made as many starts as the 130 Cease has made since 2021.
“Absolutely incredible,” King said.
Cease is among the hardest-throwing right-handers in the game. His slider got a 45% miss rate last season, third-highest of any pitch in MLB. According to the metric Stuff+, which purports to quantify a pitcher’s arsenal based on velocity, spin rate and movement, Cease was tied with American League Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal for second behind Corbin Burnes in 2024.
But Cease’s durability is among his most cherished traits.
“People ask me about my goals,” he said. “I always say, ‘I just want to make all my starts.’ It’s definitely special. It’s very difficult to do.”
How does he do it?
“Skill and luck, I guess,” he said. “I would say effort, genetics and luck.”
King sees something else.
“If you look at Dylan’s lower half, it’s like the most perfect pitcher’s mechanics you’ll ever see,” King said. “So now he’s able to put all the energy he puts into 98 mph for 32 starts for four seasons and he’s able to disperse it through his whole body. After an outing, Dylan doesn’t come in saying, ‘Oh, my shoulder is cranky’ or ‘My forearm hurts.’ It’s like, ‘I got left oblique’ and ‘I got right glute.’ It’s throughout the entire body is where he’s generating his power.”
Sheets starts strong
With right-hander Reynaldo Lopez on the mound, Sheets will likely be the Padres designated hitter tonight.
He earned his roster spot by spraying hits all over the field in Cactus League play, including a stretch in which he hit six home runs in a stretch of 18 at-bats.
“Didn’t quite feel like a spring training home run right there,” Sheets said. “That was different. … Making the team was huge and just want to be a contributor to this lineup. You know, whatever it is, add depth, whatever it is, but be a piece every single night. And whether it’s coming off the bench or starting, whatever it is, I just want to be a piece of this.”
Sheets is one of the great stories of the spring. He was non-tendered by the White Sox in November and signed a minor-league deal about a week before spring training.
The White Sox gave up on him because he had suffered a severe drop-off the past two seasons (from a .244 average and .743 OPS in 2021-22 to a .220 average and .635 OPS in ‘23-24.
But the Padres saw some changes (actually a return to more of what he did with his body and swing path early in his career) they could help him make.
And two key figures had history with him. Or rather, with his father.
Hitting coach Victor Rodriguez roomed with Gavin’s father, Larry, when they were minor-leaguers in the Orioles system.
And the clubhouse attendant for the Double-A Charlotte O’s when Sheets and Rodriguez were playing there was a kid named Mike Shildt.
When Gavin Sheets told his dad who his new manager was this spring, Larry Sheets’ response was, “I hope I tipped him well.”
Laughing, Shildt said, “He probably did.”
Shildt added that a good tip in the early 1980s for a clubhouse kid in Double-A was $1.
Tidbits
- Merrill, who drove in four runs, is the first Padres player age 21 or younger to have three or more RBIs on opening day. Three other players 21 or younger have had four RBIs on opening day in MLB history. They are: Jason Heyward (2010), Gary Carter (1975) and Ty Cobb (1908).
- Jeff Sanders wrote (here) about the status of Eguy Rosario and Tyler Wade, who were both designated for assignment. Wade already cleared waivers and now must make a decision on whether to accept an assignment to Triple-A. Remember, he signed a fully guaranteed contract for $900,000 in the offseason. The Padres believe they can work a trade for Rosario, and they have another six days to do so before he would then have to be placed on waivers.
- Annie Heilbrunn wrote (here) about Jurickson Profar’s return to San Diego.
- Kirk Kenney did his usual excellent job (here) touring the ballpark yesterday to bring you the a look at what was happening off the field at the opener.
- Jacob has stranded all nine runners he has inherited in his career.
- Yesterday was Machado’s seventh game with two steals. He had never had two doubles and two stolen bases in a game.
- Here is a chart I will update from time to time this season, as Machado continues to climb the the ranks of Padres career leaders. Remember, he is already the franchise’s home run leader (with 167).
All right, that’s it for me. I forgot how much I love doing these. But I’d better stop. There are 161 games to go.
Talk to you tomorrow.
P.S. I don’t do this often, but it is kind of important. Would you please consider spending as little as $3 for a one-year digital subscription to the Union-Tribune. This newsletter is free, but the manpower and travel we put into covering the Padres certainly is not free. We cover a lot more in San Diego than the Padres, but just our coverage of the team will give you about 700 articles a year. So that’s, like, less half-a-cent per Padres article if you didn’t read any of our other stories. Here is the link to our subscription deals. And if you already subscribe, thank you.
Originally Published: March 28, 2025 at 6:30 AM PDT
