Padres Daily: Closing in on a celebration; big-game Buehler; Jake shows up in box score; Tatis reaches 25/25

Good morning,

The champagne and beer and goggles and the reams of plastic to cover the lockers will be stowed near the visitors clubhouse at Dodger Stadium tomorrow.

Whether it is then or Wednesday or Thursday or over the weekend, the Padres are virtually certain to be celebrating this week.

With every victory and every day ripped off the calendar, it becomes more of an inevitably.

You can read about the Padres’ latest victory — their 13th in their past 14 games — in my game story (here) from yesterday’s 7-3 defeat of the Marlins.

That moved the Padres two victories or a victory and a Diamondbacks loss or two Diamondbacks losses away from clinching a postseason berth.

As Fernando Tatis Jr. said, the Padres “still have homework to do.”

But the reality is that even if the Padres win one game this week, the Diamondbacks would have to go 6-0 to finish ahead of them.

Big-game Buehler

Walker Buehler showed yesterday why he is likely going to be part of the Padres’ starting rotation in the first postseason series.

He allowed just two hits and two walks before surrendering a three-run homer with two outs in the seventh inning that he never would have been in the game to allow in the postseason.

The 32-year-old right-hander has a 3.15 ERA over his past nine starts.

The Padres hope it means something that he appears to be getting stronger and better as the postseason approaches.

Buehler has allowed one run over 18 innings while making starts in three different World Series for the Dodgers, and he closed out their 2024 championship with a scoreless ninth inning in Game 5 against the Yankees.

“I think that’s who he is,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said. “That’s his persona: ‘Give me the ball in a big game and I’ll give you a good start.’ That’s not easy to do. A lot of guys can’t elevate their game in that way or be able to stay in that same space that they are constantly.

“He has that unique ability, and I think we’ve seen that throughout his entire career. Now it’s nice to have that type of personality on our team.”

Provided Michael King does not have to pitch in the season finale on Sunday against the Diamondbacks, the Padres will go with King in Game 1 of their wild-card series. Nick Pivetta and Buehler would seem to be in line for the next two games based on recent results and, in no small part, because of his track record as a winning pitcher.

“We believe in all of our starters,” Stammen said yesterday. “I think all of those guys could pitch in the playoffs and do really well. (Pivetta and Buehler) have pitched really good here at the end. Walker has got a pedigree of pitching in the playoffs, so we always hold that in high regard. We’ve got a great pitching staff. We’re looking forward to using those guys if we get to that situation.”

Buehler’s explanation of how he approaches games of greater import illustrated his experience.

“I’m trying to go out and give our team a chance to win the game, and I think that’s a big part of it for me,” Buehler said. “I think in these big games, or at the end of the year, or however you want to frame it, I think if they give up a run and we don’t, I think then we’re winning, right? There’s a lot of beating the other starting pitcher that I think at the end of the year is super important.”

There is an air about Buehler when he is on the mound, even when he was struggling at points this season.

He never looks defeated. He often looks, actually, like he might come off the mound and fight someone.

The Padres are 21-10 when he starts. There is some randomness to that, certainly. They are 3-1 in starts he hasn’t lasted even three innings.

But there is something else.

“I think it’s just a level of confidence,” Jake Cronenworth said yesterday. “I think he knows who he is as a pitcher. You see his preparation and what he does and his execution out there. It seems like it’s getting better and better every outing, and he’s been doing this for a while now.”

Rotation equation

As expected, Stammen confirmed King will start tomorrow’s series opener against the Dodgers, switching spots in the rotation with Robbie Ray.

“It lines (King) up for the last day of the season,” Stammen said. “If that game really matters and it’s a win or go-home type game, it sets up our best pitcher in a win or go-home scenario. And then if he doesn’t pitch that game, he would most likely pitch Game 1 of the playoffs.”

That seems to indicate King will only pitch Sunday against the Diamondbacks if the Padres are still fighting for a postseason spot and not if the game is merely to determine whether they get to host the wild-card series.

That makes sense.

King on the mound for Game 1 would seem paramount — even if that is in Chicago or Philadelphia or Atlanta.

The Padres have played exceptionally well at Petco Park this season. With that final three-game series remaining next weekend, they have a chance to tie for their second-best record ever at home in a full 81-game slate.

But visiting teams have won nine of the 16 wild-card series since the playoffs were expanded in 2022. It is far from a death sentence to have to go on the road.

Ultimately, it could come down to a choice between being at home and not having a pitcher who has a 1.95 ERA over his past eight starts or being on the road and being able to put that pitcher on the mound for Game 1. That seems like a pretty easy choice.

Jake in a zone

Cronenworth played third base yesterday, the third different infield position he started at in the past four days and the fourth one he started at in the past eight days.

It is that defensive versatility and his playing those positions well that contributes to baseball people often paying him the compliment of saying his contributions “don’t always show up in the box score.”

Yesterday, however, was one of those games where Cronenworth showed up prominently in the box score.

He had the second multi-homer game of his career, his fourth game with at least five RBIs and his fifth game with three extra-base hits.

“That was pretty cool,” he said afterward.

Cronenworth is batting .400 (16-for-40) during a 10-game hitting streak, which is two off the career high he set in 2024.

“When he’s hitting in the seven hole and he can pop two homers, that’s a big deal,” Stammen said. “That just makes our lineup as strong as we can possibly be.”

Power + Speed

Tatis’ home run in yesterday’s seventh inning was his 25th of the season, making him just the 11th player to ever have at least four seasons with at least 25 home runs and 25 stolen bases.

We have talked a lot about why that is so remarkable this season based on his having zero home runs through 55 games.

Tatis has 36 stolen bases, so if he had his usual number of home runs by May 30 this year and also finished like this, we would be talking about him closing in on becoming the seventh member of the 40/40 club.

As it is, the limited number of players to get to 25/25 as often as Tatis has, demonstrates the rarity of his dual threat.

Adam on track

Reliever Jason Adam will throw a live batting practice today at Petco Park with the expectation he will be activated off the injured list later this week.

This despite his having allowed nine runs and recording one out in his past two outings for Triple-A El Paso.

“Not great,” he said with a laugh yesterday morning. “I think the rehab (games), I don’t read into those. I read into how it feels coming out of the hand. I read into how the pitch shapes are relative to the location and all that. I feel ready to get big-league hitters out. … I feel like I’m in a great spot.”

The Padres are inclined to agree. The consensus was that he had some bad luck while pitching in the hitter-friendly environment.

And the reality is there is one week left in the regular season.

Said Stammen: “We want to see him pitch against big-league hitters … and get him ready for playoff baseball.”

Play who you play

The competition over the past two weeks was — with the exception of the first victory, against the Yankees — not very good.

But, hey, the Padres weren’t even beating those kinds of teams in late August and early September.

And a good team has to beat not-good teams.

The Padres have done that, for sure.

They swept the Nationals, Giants and Marlins and won three of four against the Rockies. The Marlins were the best of the bunch and greatly brought up the trio’s winning percentage, to a combined .432 (or 84 games below .500).

“We’ve had a good run of baseball,” Stammen said. “Sometimes you take it for granted. You feel like we should be winning all these games, but that’s not the case. The teams we’ve played over this last stretch have played us very tough, and we’ve just been able to stick to our guns and play tight baseball, winning baseball, and we’ve come out on the good end of it a lot of times.”

The Padres finished the season 59-28 against teams with losing records, best in the major leagues.

Among the six National League teams in playoff position, only the Phillies’ winning percentage against winning teams (.460) is worse than the Padres (.475).

Tidbits

• Cronenworth’s first home run was the shortest (325 feet) hit at Petco Park since at least 2015, when StatCast began tracking home run distances.
• Jackson Merrill went 1-for-4 to extend his hitting streak to a career-high 11 games. He is batting .438 (21-for-48) during the streak.
• Dustin Harris extended his hitting streak to 10 games by going 1-for-4. He is batting .409 (15-for-40) in those 11 games.
• Tatis has a .414 on-base percentage while reaching base in 15 consecutive games. He has also scored a run in nine straight games, the longest such streak of his career.
• Xander Bogaerts was 1-for-3 with a walk and is reaching base at a .414 clip in 17 games this month.
• The Padres’ first community initiative under new owners Kwanza Jones and José E. Feliciano as a $1.25 million donation by the team and Yu Darvish to the Clairemont Boys & Girls Club. Annie Heilbrunn wrote a story (here) on that effort.

All right, that’s it for me.

No game today, so no newsletter.

I will have a story on our Padres page later today that looks back at arguably the most crucial period of the Padres’ season and how they dealt with it.

The next Padres Daily will arrive to your inbox Wednesday morning after the series opener at Dodger Stadium.

Talk to you then.