The San Diego Padres posted some gaudy numbers last season, and one of the best belonged to former ace Dylan Cease, who struck out 200 for the fifth season in a row. That’s a tough number to replicate, but starter Nick Pivetta is poised to get there, and that possibility was recently listed as an eye-popping projection by David Adler of MLB.com in his rundown of these kinds of stats.
Is 200 strikeouts a reasonable number for Pivetta to attain? He’s come close before, actually. The 32-year old Pivetta had 188 strikeouts for the Philadelphia Phillies back in 2018, but he also posted an ERA of 4.77 that same year. Part of the problem was playing in a bandbox ballpark that was viewed as a hitter’s paradise, but Pivetta didn’t have nearly the level of command he has now.
It looked like his career as a potential strikeout king was over when he was acquired in a trade by the Boston Red Sox. He was viewed as a back-end starter at that point, but Pivetta had other ideas. The right-hander was still pitching in a bandbox park where homers were common, but Pivetta began to establish a reputation as a back-end innings eater.
He pitched 155 innings in 2021, and with those innings came strikeouts. Lots of strikeouts—175 in 155 innings in 2021, although Pivetta’s ERA remained high at 4.53. He boosted his strikeout total to 175 in 2022 and 183 in 2023, but that was when the Red Sox began to sour on him as then-new GM Craig Breslow started to rebuild the farm system and the rotation.
Pivetta could have stayed with the Sox and found a slot at the back of the rotation despite the organizational shift, but Pivetta bet on himself as a free agent before last season, signing a four-year, $55 million deal with the Padres. He won big, striking out 190 and posting a 2.87 ERA for San Diego, and the larger dimensions of Petco Park played into his success as well.
Based on this kind of career arc, Pivetta could definitely strike out 200 this year, but several things would have to go his way. He pitched 181-2/3 innings for the Padres last year, but San Diego will manage him more carefully this season given how thin their starting rotation is as currently constituted.
There’s also the question of whether Pivetta will still be doing it for the Padres, given the rumor that he’s on the block with a player option coming up at the end of this season. It's an interesting statistical challenge, and it will be fun to see where he lands.