The San Diego Padres have a lot of positional battles going on right now, and the competition for pitching slots is just as tough. Pitching coach Ruben Niebla is trying to get it all sorted out after adding the title of “associate manager” to his resume this offseason, and yesterday he spoke to the media about who’s doing what and how the field looks at the moment.
The back of the rotation is the hot spot right now, and there are a lot of names involved. Nick Pivetta, Michael King and Joe Musgrove are the starters who came to camp as a lock, with the other names including Triston McKenzie, Walker Buehler, Marco Gonzales, Germán Márquez, JP Sears and Matt Waldron, according to AJ Cassavell of MLB.com.
“We have some guys that have really presented themselves as being in a good spot,” Niebla said. “… There’s a lot of guys that are really in for that final spot, really competing for that spot. We like the competition right now.”
Most of the performances have been impressive so far. JP Sears and Walker Buehler auditioned for a slot at the back of the rotation yesterday against the Seattle Mariners, and Sears worked three innings of one-run ball in a gamete Padres went on to win, 7-1.
Buehler, meanwhile took to the back fields and added a foreign flavor to the competition as he faced the NC Dinos of the Korean Baseball Organization in a “B” game. The former Los Angeles Dodgers star gave up two runs in the first, then came back to throw a couple of scoreless innings. Buehler is a long shot, but Sears’ start was promising.
Meanwhile, back in the bullpen, reliever Mason Miller has been dominant in his initial appearances, but bullpen anchor Adrian Morejon has only appeared in one game, the back-field affair against the Dinos. Wandy Peralta just threw his first bullpen session, but he’ll be leaving the team to join the Dominican Republic in the WBC.
This is by design, according to Niebla, however. Morejon threw a lot of innings last year as he made a career-high 75 appearances, so Niebla worked with the pitcher to come up with a different plan.
“Morejon took on a big load last year,” Niebla said. “... Him and I had the discussions, we were going to slow-play it just a little bit going into camp.”
The other big pitching question going into the season will be the number of starters the Padres decide to carry. Right now the team is working off a five-day plan, but there could be advantages to going with six starters with King and Musgrove both coming off serious injuries.
Niebla, however, was noncommittal about that, with the number of off days in April being a strong argument for carrying fewer starters.
“They’re all in a five-day routine,” Niebla said. “Let the competition play itself out, then we’ll make decisions off that.
“You’d take one bullpen arm less. And we have a pretty good bullpen. Good competition there as well.”