Series Preview: Mariners (60-52) vs. Padres (55-58)

The Mariners are riding a serious high back home this week, and a high water mark for the season as well. Off a four-game sweep of the Angels and 5 consecutive series wins, Seattle hosts the second half of the 2023 Vedder Cup tonight and tomorrow night. The Padres and Mariners split the two games they played in San Diego in June, so the season series goes to whichever team sweeps these two games… or to no one.

The Padres have underperformed their talent all year, and are currently three games under .500 at 55-58. This puts them 11 games behind in the NL West and four games out of the third NL Wild Card spot, with three other teams ahead of them in that race. In a similar position at the trade deadline, the Mets sold from their big-league team to focus on 2024, but San Diego went all in to shore up a team that, on paper, should have had a shot this year. With no position players on the IL and nationally-recognized stars at several positions, the Padres opted to add pitching depth (Rich Hill in the rotation and Scott Barlow in the bullpen), and supporting bats from both sides (Ji-Man Choi and Garrett Cooper). The hope, it seems, is that the things that have held the Padres back so far have been issues of luck, like their awful 6-18 record in one-run games and no extra-inning wins. So far, they’re 3-3 in August, a pace that won’t get them to the playoffs.

All that pessimism aside, the Padres lineup is filled with star potential, young and older, proven and less so. Juan Soto, unsurprisingly, leads the team in almost all offensive categories, with an fWAR (4.3) and wRC+ (158) that make the top ten in baseball. He was the Padres lone batter on the NL All-Star team. Just behind Soto in offensive stats, and leading off for the Padres, is second baseman Ha-Seong Kim. Kim signed with the Padres in 2020 after seven seasons in the KBO, and is having a breakout third year in the majors. He has amassed four fWAR already and shows significant improvement in all offensive numbers over his 2022 season. Fernando Tatis, Jr., Manny Machado, and Xander Bogaerts are all threats to opposing pitching, batting above league average and hitting for power, though none bring quite the dominance they did in previous years.

Probable Pitchers

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• Stuff+ scores for Mariners starters

Photo by Matt Thomas/San Diego Padres/Getty Images

Nick Martinez has effectively bounced between the rotation and bullpen since making his return to the majors from a stint in Japan last year. He started out the last two seasons working out of the rotation for the Padres but was eventually pushed into high-leverage work in the bullpen. With Joe Musgrove recently sidelined with a shoulder injury, Martinez made a spot start last Wednesday and a two inning relief outing on Saturday. It’s likely that his “start” against the Mariners will probably last a single time through the order before giving way to the bullpen.

Yu Darvish has been pitching in the major leagues for 12 years now, far surpassing the seven years he spent pitching in Japan to start his career. While he’s been overshadowed by some of the other pitchers who have made the stateside jump, he’s been a steady contributor for a long time, and the Padres just signed him to a six-year extension that will take him through his age 42 season. He still throws the kitchen sink and then some with seven pitches in his repertoire, each effective in different ways and situations. This year, he’s reduced the usage of his gyro slider in favor of the sweeping version of that pitch. It’s given him a few additional swings and misses, though he’s locating all of his pitches in the zone less frequently than he has in the past leading to a pretty significant spike in walk rate.

The Big Picture:

Unfortunately, the Mariners’ dramatic sweep of the Angels hasn’t gained them ground on the Rangers in the AL West or much on the teams currently in Wild Card spots. It did, however, knock the Angels precipitously down the table, and allow the M’s to leapfrog the Yankees and Red Sox to become the first AL team outside the playoff berths. In the AL West, Texas swept the Marlins last weekend and begins this week playing Oakland; they don’t seem to be losing any grip on the division. The Astros split their four-game weekend series with the Yankees and play the Orioles this week before Baltimore heads to Seattle for Félix weekend. The Angels try to salvage their season in a series against the Giants, while Toronto and Tampa try to keep their Wild Card spots as they play the Cardinals and the Guardians, respectively. Boston won the first of their four games against the Royals yesterday, while the Yankees lost their first of three versus the White Sox.