Good morning from Philadelphia,

By the end of a long day, we had seen what the Padres hope they can be more often and what they have been too often.

You can read in my game story (here) about the Padres and Phillies splitting yesterday’s doubleheader. That story focused on Nick Pivetta being his usual 2025 self and Dylan Cease being his usual 2025 self.

If you’ve been following along, you know which one of them got a win.

We will talk more about Pivetta later.

First, we will look at an offense that took what it was given in the opener yesterday.

Let’s not get carried away. The Padres walked nine times, including three times with the bases loaded. They got five hits. They did not score after the fourth inning.

And in the second game, they were mostly shut down for seven innings by one of the National League’s best starting pitchers, Cristopher Sánchez, and the two relievers who followed him.

But in that first game, the Padres put into practice — at least partially — something they have been talking about. Talking about a lot.

There was no downplaying how important Mike Shildt felt it was that the Padres hitters let that game come to them.

“If we do that, this team is going to be virtually unstoppable,” Shildt said emphatically between games. “It really is. We were very stingy. Weren’t going to give them anything that wasn’t on the plate. Amazing job. … If we’re stingy like that — you know there’s no, no absolute in this game, but if you do that with the talent we have in the zone, then we’re going to be a very dangerous team. … We’ve done it. Listen, the game can be challenging when guys are painting on both sides of the plate and they’re a little bit off of it. (Hitters) can tend to expand. But we got back being stubborn today.”

The Padres chased just 18 of the 90 pitches (20%) they saw outside the strike zone, 10 percentage points below their rate for the season. It was encouraging, because they have taken themselves out of too many at-bats lately — by chasing outside the strike zone and not being selective enough inside it.

Shrinking the zone, waiting for their pitch and doing damage has been the focus of so much of their internal discussion recently.

“Not many hits,” Manny Machado said. “But we had really good at-bats overall. As a group, it was tough outs.”

Next up is letting that translate into actually doing damage.

“I think we’ve got some good things coming,” Machado said. “We’ve made some adjustments as a group. Really looking forward to those adjustments and seeing how we’re going to go. I think guys are starting to get back on their plan. I think it’s going to be fun when we start rolling again.”

Losing, gaining

Losing two of three to the Phillies continued a trend.

The Padres have lost their past five series against teams with winning records and are 3-12-1 in series against winning teams this season.

We have talked a lot here about how playoff teams build their records on the backs of losing teams. And the Padres are taking care of business there. They are 12-0 in series against losing teams.

In one sense, this pretty easily explains how the Padres have gone from nine games over .500 on June 1 to six games over today.

Through June 1, 10 of their first 19 series were against teams that presently have losing records. Since June 2, seven of their nine series have been against teams with winning records.

Here’s the thing: While losing two of three to the Phillies, the Padres moved up in the standings.

They were a game out of the final National League wild-card spot when they left Cincinnati. They are in possession of that spot now, a half-game up.

The only thing to take from all this with 76 games remaining is that it is probably going to be a wild ride.

A day later

Pivetta’s mood was temporarily as dark and stormy as the weather when he arrived at Citizens Bank Park on Tuesday and found out the game had been postponed.

It was Canada Day, and the native of Victoria, Canada, felt locked in for his first start in Philadelphia against his first big-league team.

“It’s exciting, obviously, to pitch on my national holiday,” Pivetta said. “Also, at the same time, it’s exciting to pitch in the Bank.”

Pivetta made his MLB debut for the Phillies in 2017 and had a 5.50 ERA in 92 games (71 starts) for them over the next three-plus seasons before a trade to the Red Sox in July 2020.

He made two starts against the Phillies in Boston but had never pitched against them here.

He brought a 5.15 ERA at Citizens Bank Park into yesterday’s game.

And he went about showing the Phillies who he is now by allowing them one run (on Kyle Schwarber’s solo homer in the sixth inning) on seven hits over six innings. He struck out six and, for the second straight start, did not walk a batter.

As he had in his previous start and did so much at the beginning of the season, Pivetta dominated counts yesterday. He was at 1-2 or 0-2 against 11 batters and 2-0 or 2-1 against five. He went to three balls just once.

Yesterday was Pivetta’s eighth time this season going at least six innings while allowing one or zero runs. That is tied with Zack Wheeler and Paul Skenes for most in the NL and tied for second most in the major leagues.

The 32-year-old right-hander, who signed a four-year, $55 million contract with the Padres in February, has never finished an MLB season with an ERA under 4.04.

His 3.25 ERA this year is his lowest 17 starts into any of the six seasons he has made at least that many starts.

Asked how different a pitcher he is now versus his time in Philadelphia, which saw him go back and forth between the rotation and bullpen, Pivetta laughed before answering.

“I mean, that’s like a whole podcast, bro,” he said. “I can’t even put that — if I were to put it in like a short sentence, I mean, I think that the road that has got me to being a Padre has allowed me to pitch how I pitch today. You know, quality start, attacking the strike zone, not walking guys. Being OK with giving up a solo shot, being OK with having runners on base and still executing my pitches.

“I think if you were to look at me back when I was with Philly, I’m walking four guys, I’m giving up five runs, I’m throwing 100 pitches in five innings. … So I think where we’re at differently is I’ve taken the building blocks that I’ve learned from all of my past experiences, good or bad. You know, mental struggles and physical struggles. And then kind of, as I’ve gotten older, through my experience, been able to pitch the way I pitch here.”

Yu ready for this?

The Padres are operating with nine relievers for the next few days.

They recalled Eduarniel Nuñez on Wednesday while optioning Matt Waldron back to Triple-A.

The 26-year-old Nuñez made his major league debut in last night’s game. He relieved Yuki Matsui with a runner at first base and two outs in the seventh inning and surrendered a triple to Alec Bohm and walked a batter before ending the inning. Nuñez, who topped 100 mph three times, walked the first batter in the eighth before being pulled.

Waldron started Monday in place of the injured Ryan Bergert, who was hit in the forearm by a line drive on June 24 and won’t be eligible to come off the injured list until July 10.

The pitching staff will get another shakeup in the coming days.

The rainout will force them to call up a starting pitcher for Sunday’s game against the Rangers.

That could be Omar Cruz or Kyle Hart up from Triple-A or Braden Nett up from Double-A.

Or it could be Yu Darvish, who threw 64 pitches in a simulated game against low-A hitters on Tuesday.

“Could be,” Shildt said. “Could not be. We haven’t made that decision. … I’m not saying it is him. I’m not not saying it is him.”

A lot

Waldron was told he will be back up at some point when he was informed Tuesday that he was being optioned back to Triple-A. He needs to clean up some things with his knuckleball and with game management.

Waldron threw his knuckleball a career-high 77 times among his 104 pitches in 4⅔ innings at the start of Monday’s 4-0 loss to the Phillies. He walked six batters, was charged with three wild pitches (plus one passed ball on a knuckleball that bounced off catcher Martín Maldonado’s glove), had two batters steal and allowed four runs.

It was a quasi-historic mess.

Waldron is one of 15 pitchers to ever walk six and have three wild pitches in a game in which he did not make it through five innings. Add in the six hits, and he is one of three pitchers to have ever had such a game.

Mr. selective

Jackson Merrill declared earlier this season that he is “a hitter, not a walker.”

But he is smart enough to know when something needs to change.

“I am a hitter,” he said yesterday. “But (pitchers) will keep expanding and expanding and expanding if I keep chasing.”

So he stopped chasing so much on pitches outside the zone, especially on the first pitch of plate appearances.

Merrill walked a career-high three times in yesterday’s first game and has walked 13 times in 64 plate appearances since June 9. He walked eight times in his first 164 plate appearances this season (through June 8).

“Just honed it in,” he said.

Merrill talked on June 8 at the conclusion of a series in Milwaukee about not seeing the ball well how he needed to be more disciplined early in counts.

He has always gone to the plate looking to swing, and he was among the best in the major leagues when putting the first pitch in play his rookie season and his first dozen or so games this season. But he had taken to swinging at pitches he should not.

Since June 9, he has cut down just slightly on his swing rate on the first pitch but has trimmed his chase rate on the first pitch. And he is back to getting more hits when he does swing at the first pitch, going 4-for-10 in that span when putting the first pitch in play.

The result is that he is giving himself more of a chance. Merrill, who had one hit in each game yesterday, is batting .264 (14-for-53) with a .394 on-base percentage in 15 games since June 9.

TV/Radio swap

As many of you noticed, based on the volume of emails I received, Tony Gwynn Jr. and Mark Grant switched booths for the second time in the past five series.

Gwynn provided color commentary paired with Don Orsillo on the television/streaming broadcasts for all three games in Philadelphia while Grant joined Jesse Agler on radio. That also happened in Los Angeles last month.

Grant, who began working Padres television broadcasts in 1996, has done radio on rare occasions in recent years when there were scheduling gaps. And Gwynn frequently fills in on TV when Grant is off. But it was unprecedented for them to switch places when both were working.

A Padres spokesman said the recent switches were to give both men experience in the different mediums but that no permanent change was planned for the foreseeable future.

Double day

It rains a lot here in the summer.

This was the third time in seven seasons (not counting 2020, when the teams did not play) that the Padres have played a doubleheader in Philadelphia. It was the second one due to a rainout. The other doubleheader was scheduled.

Three of the Padres’ nine doubleheaders since 2018 have been here. That includes two of the three necessitated by weather postponements.

Yesterday was also the anniversary of the marathon doubleheader between the Phillies and Padres at Veterans Stadium that ended at 4:40 a.m. on July 3, 1993, the latest a game has ever ended.

The final out was made 11 hours, 56 minutes after the first pitch in the first game.

That second game, which lasted 10 innings, didn’t even begin until 1:28 a.m. July 3 after the first game was interrupted by three rain delays totaling nearly six hours of delays.

Tidbits

• Machado was voted an All-Star starter for the fourth time in his career and his second time with the Padres. I wrote about that (here) yesterday.
• Machado’s three-run double in the second inning of yesterday’s first game was the 1,995th hit of his career. He was hitless the rest of the day. So he goes into the 10-game homestand that begins Friday needing five hits for 2,000.
• The Padres were 2-for-9 with runners in scoring position in the first game yesterday. It was the first time in seven games they had more than one hit with runners in scoring position. They went 1-for-5 in yesterday’s second game, and they are batting .117 (7-for-60) with runners in scoring position over their past eight games.
• Fernando Tatis Jr. was 3-for-8 with a walk yesterday and is 6-for-20 with three walks during a five-game hitting streak.
• The five runs the Padres scored in the second inning of the first game were their most in an inning since May 28, a span of 30 games. They had scored at least five runs in five innings through their first 54 games.
• The word “magician” is often used to describe Jose Iglesias’ defensive ability. Maybe never will that be a more apt description than on this play.

Jose Iglesias makes a mind-blowing grab by the tarp pic.twitter.com/HmmBqlXQVC

— MLB (@MLB) July 2, 2025

All right, that’s it for me.

No game today.

I will have a feature on Machado posted at some point this afternoon (or evening) on our Padres page.

We will have our usual coverage for the series against the Rangers over the holiday weekend, but I won’t send a newsletter again until Monday morning.

Enjoy your Independence Day weekend!

Talk to you Monday.