Good morning,

Seven games in 11 days is probably enough for these two teams.

It certainly was enough for Fernando Tatis Jr., who the Padres hope will not miss any time after getting hit near the right wrist by a pitch in the ninth inning last night.

The team said X-rays were negative, but Tatis said they were inconclusive. He will have further imaging today.

You can read in my game story (here) from the Padres’ 5-3 victory about how Tatis being hit by Jack Little, who was making his MLB debut, led to Padres manager Mike Shildt and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts doing a lot of yelling at each other and having to be restrained from possibly doing more to each other.

Dodgers-Padres benches cleared after Fernando Tatís Jr. was hit by a pitch pic.twitter.com/qj78xAKCp9

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) June 20, 2025

The benches emptied. The bullpens emptied. Everyone from both teams met for a while near home plate, and afterward there were different opinions on why it all became such a big deal.

There are details and plenty of quotes in the game story.

The Padres made it clear they are tired of the Dodgers throwing inside to Tatis.

“I mean it’s, I don’t know, eight, nine, 10 in a row already, last three or four years,” Manny Machado said. “Let’s just hope his CT scan comes back negative. They got to pray it comes back negative tomorrow. You know? Just pray. … They need to set a little candle up for Tati tomorrow and hope that everything comes back negative. That’s not a good spot to get hit. I don’t care who it is. I don’t care who’s on the mound. It was five now in a year. That’s just unacceptable.”

Yes, that is the number. Dodgers pitchers have hit Tatis five times in the past 17 games in which he has played against them. That includes three times in the past six games. (Everyone kept saying seven, because the teams have played seven times this season. But he was not hit in the first game.)

“Look, they like to pitch in,” Shildt said. “They’re aggressive pitching in. That’s fine. People pitch Tati in. He’s been hit five times by this group and played a lot of dodge ball because he’s athletic. He’s been hit three times in the last seven games. You can put it any way you want, but he hasn’t been hit more than four times by any other team in his career.”

That is accurate. And since the start of last season against every team besides the Dodgers, Tatis has been hit a total of six times.

Roberts’ contention is that Tatis being hit last night was not intentional. It is what he repeatedly yelled on the field and what he said after the game.

“I think obviously anyone knows there was no intent,” Roberts said. “… I can honestly say — I know Tatis was hit three times in the last seven games we’ve played — there was not one intent. You don’t want that guy on base.”

If not entirely on purpose, the Padres believe the Dodgers throwing at Tatis is certainly purposeful.

“They know who to target,” Machado said.

No other Padres or Dodgers player has been hit more than two times by the other team’s pitchers in the past two seasons.

“They’ve been going at Tati for a minute,” Xander Bogaerts said. “… We know how good he plays, and we especially know how good he plays here. I’ve seen him hit balls here pretty far. So, I guess they don’t want him to do damage. But going up there, up and in. I mean, it’s not the place to go.”

Intent, to the Padres, is immaterial at this point.

“For me, it wasn’t (intentional) in the moment,” Tatis said. “But, I mean, how many times (have) they hit me already? I know … probably the intention is not behind that. But just how we play baseball, everybody knows enough is enough is enough.”

Shildt wasn’t certain whether Tatis was hit on purpose, and he didn’t care.

“I’d like to think not, but I can’t say that,” he said. “Only a couple people know that. And whether it was or it wasn’t, enough is enough. You know, we got a guy that’s getting X-rays right now. It’s one of the best players in the game … and this guy has taken shots, OK.

“You mess with people’s careers, mess with people’s seasons. I don’t need to go back into the last year-and-a-half of what we’ve tolerated. We’ve kept our eye on the prize for this group. … But again, we got a guy that’s in there getting drilled and got X-rays. And that’s not good enough. It’s not cool, man. He’s our dude, and I got him and got our club.”

Now, the Padres hit Shohei Ohtani twice in this series, including in the ninth inning last night. And neither time was there much protest about it not being on purpose.

Randy Vásquez, for the record, said his pitch to Ohtani on Tuesday got away from him. Robert Suarez, who hit Ohtani last night, declined an interview request.

“Clearly there was intent behind it,” Roberts said of Suarez’s pitch.

Shildt didn’t say either way whether his pitchers drilled Ohtani on purpose. But he didn’t shy away from the concept.

“Teams that I manage don’t get into altercations like this, because teams I manage don’t throw at people,” he said. “But also, teams I manage don’t take anything. And after a while, I’m not going to take it. I’m not going to take it on behalf of Tati. I’m not going to take it on behalf of our team, intentional or unintentional. It’s really that simple. That’s how this game is played. And you want to call that old school then, yeah, we’ll play old-school baseball.”

Suarez was ejected after his 3-0 fastball plunked Ohtani in the shoulder area.

“That’s their decision, and Major League Baseball is going to have to look at that,” Roberts said. “That was after warnings were issued.”

Yes, it is likely suspensions are coming. It is not clear whether Shildt or Esposito will be held accountable for Ohtani being hit.

It will be interesting to see whether MLB suspends Roberts, who appeared to bump Shildt when they first came together.

There was one moment that stood out from a Dodgers player who it is kind of difficult to not like.

Ohtani, who when he was hit Tuesday seemed to know right away it was on purpose, ran to first base after getting plunked last night. As he did, and as a couple Dodgers players prepared to climb the railing of their dugout, Ohtani briefly turned and waved to his team, as if to tell them to not come on the field.

“I think he knew it was intentional,” Roberts said. “He wasn’t hurt by it. And he didn’t want any more drama. I respect that a lot.”

Then, during a break while Yuki Matsui warmed up after replacing Suarez, Ohtani walked over to the Padres dugout and spoke with the players along the railing.

Shohei Ohtani plays peacemaker at the end of another wild game between the Padres and Dodgers. pic.twitter.com/V03xUugs8z

— MLB (@MLB) June 20, 2025

Now the Padres and Dodgers will go about playing other teams for a couple months.

And we’ll keep these dates in mind:

“We’re going to get after it for the next two months,” Shildt said. “And they’ll be on the schedule two months from now, and we’ll be ready.”

Said Roberts: “We’re honestly trying to win baseball games. That’s our only goal. … I do know we don’t see these guys for a long time, and we’re going to try to win as many games as we can before we see them again.”

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Rested, rebounding

Bogaerts’ heroics stood this time.

A day after his ninth-inning double tied the game only to have Will Smith hit a walk-off homer in the bottom of the inning, Bogaerts went 4-for-4 with a home run and a double and scored the Padres’ first three runs.

“(Picked up) where he left off,” Shildt said.

As noted in yesterday’s newsletter, Bogaerts was fairly crushed that his contribution was for naught on Wednesday.

“One of the few positive things I do, it don’t even last a couple minutes,” he said after that game.

It has been a mostly brutal season at the plate for Bogaerts, who entered last night’s game batting .227 with a .617 OPS.

He had gone 114 at-bats without a home run before sending a splitter from Yoshinobu Yamamoto 401 feet to left-center field in the second inning.

Bogaerts is a renowned tinkerer at the plate and is also known to work relentlessly in the batting cage before, during and after games.

He acknowledged last night he did not take any swings before Wednesday’s game and said it was just the second time in his career he had done that.

“I was playing (like) trash,” he said. “I mean, just one (day) without it. It was different. It’s nice to have results. So hopefully that’s the fix. Who knows?”

He meant that one pregame rest. Because he was back to his usual pregame routine yesterday.

“Today I worked,” he said. “Yeah, I don’t do that. But, I mean, sometimes, like f— it.”

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The right stuff

Ryan Bergert was one out away from being in line for the win last night. And had he completed five innings, he probably was going to get a chance to go for six.

“Got through (the lineup) twice, really poised to take him (further) even in a close game,” Shildt said. “You know, we were going to read it, but it’s comfortable before he got into a little damage.”

Bergert had allowed just two hits and no runs and got two outs deep in the fourth inning before walking No.8 hitter Tommy Edman and having Hyeseong Kim single.

So Shildt went to left-hander Adrián Morejón to face the left-handed-hitting Ohtani, who he retired for the third time in three meetings this season.

Bergert had been efficient and effective, and the Padres would love to see their starters go deeper in games more often in order to preserve their bullpen. So Shildt said Bergert was probably going to get a chance to come out in the sixth, as the Padres intended to save  Morejón for left-handed-hitting Freddie Freeman.

“It’s a game of matchups,” Bergert said. “I understand 100% where Shildty is coming from going to Morejón in that situation with Ohtani coming up a third time through the order. Obviously, you want to go deep in games. (But) I understand the situation. We’re trying to get a win.”

Bergert will get his shot if he keeps pitching the way he has in his first four big-league starts. The 25-year-old right-hander threw 41 strikes among his 71 pitches last night and is throwing strikes at a 61% rate while allowing a .169 batting average and .258 on-base percentage.

After working four scoreless innings out of the bullpen in his first callup, Bergert has a 2.25 ERA over 20 innings in his four starts.

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Not that diabolical

Some folks got in touch and suggested the reason Roberts removed Mookie Betts, Freeman and Smith from the game with the Dodgers down 5-0 in the bottom of the eighth inning was because he planned to have Little hit Tatis in the ninth.

The problem with that is that those sports in the order were not going to be due up until the seventh, eighth and ninth spots in the ninth inning. (They all did come up, but that was highly unlikely when Roberts pinch-hit for each of them in the eighth.)

“We’re using a guy that is making his major league debut,” Roberts said. “… We’re in a stretch of a lot of games. I felt that was the right time.”

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Joe Davis: “Here’s the 0-2. It is… OH NO! MARVIN HUDSON COST HIM AN IMMACULATE INNING!”

Eric Karros: “That wasn’t even borderline…. That was borderline middle-middle.”

Joe Davis: “Can we get ABS on loan for the night from Triple-A?… That’s a bummer!” #MLB pic.twitter.com/nqTl1AuS1l

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) June 20, 2025

Thanks, Marvin

Whatever side you’re on, we all got robbed of the chance to see just the 119th immaculate inning ever thrown.

Home plate umpire Marvin Hudson called this 0-2 pitch a ball in the third inning.

Had it been correctly called strike three on Tatis, it would have concluded a nine-pitch inning in which Yamamoto struck out all three batters.

Instead, it took two more pitches for Yamamoto to strike out Tatis.

An immaculate inning is far rarer than a pitcher throwing a no-hitter, which has been done 326 times, or a batter hitting for the cycle, which has been done 349 times.

Tidbits

• With Bogaerts’ four hits and Jake Cronenworth going 3-for-4, last night was the first time since July 16, 2021, that the Padres’ No.5 and No.6 hitters combined for seven hits in a game. Tommy Pham had four hits and Eric Hosmer three hits as the Padres’ fifth and sixth batters, respectively, in that day’s 24-8 victory over the Nationals.
• Center fielder Jackson Merrill, who suffered a concussion Saturday in Arizona, was cleared to do aerobic activity, play catch and hit yesterday. He is eligible to come off the injured list Sunday.
• Gavin Sheets was 1-for-4 and is batting .361 (13-for-36) during a 10-game hitting streak. It is the longest streak of his career by four games. He has over the 10 games raised his batting average 17 points to .267, the highest it has been in any of the four seasons in which he has played that many games.
• Cronenworth has reached base in 25 of his past 27 games. His .368 on-base percentage is his highest through his first 50 games in a season since he had a .376 OBP 50 games into his rookie year (2020).
• Bryce Johnson also left the game last night after being hit in the left knee by a pitch in the seventh inning. X-rays were negative. Johnson, who started in center field for the second straight night, also singled and has a hit in all three games he has played since being recalled from Triple-A on Monday.
• Luis Arraez hit his team-leading fourth triple. That is two off his career high set in 2021.
• The Padres improved to 3-3 in their brown tops.

All right, that’s it for me.

No newsletters during the Royals series. I have a bunch of events this weekend, beginning tomorrow morning. So I will cover tonight’s game and then be off until Monday.

We will have the rest of our usual coverage on our Padres page.

The next newsletter will be in your inbox Tuesday.