4 Things: Nick Martinez impresses in 4th consecutive Padres win
The San Diego Padres just keep rolling to start the season.
The San Diego Padres are 4-1 with four consecutive wins, and last night they picked up an important road win against a solid opponent in the San Francisco Giants. They even added an insurance run in the 9th to leave the game with a 4-2 victory.
It was easily their most impressive win of the young season, and they were led to victory by some of the non-superstars on the roster.
Nick Martinez, the prototypical 5th starter
It’s not often you see a MLB pitcher go five years in between starts and become better in the process. Nick Martinez’s journey is definitely unique, going to Japan and “learning how to pitch” before coming back and joining the Padres.
After one game, betting on Martinez looks like one of the smarter offseason moves for A.J. Preller.
Going against a much better team than the Diamondbacks squad San Diego pitching had been beating up on, Martinez grinded through 5 innings and gave up just 1 ER. He also struck out 6 and only walked 1.
He wasn’t dominant, but he didn’t seem rattled either. Nick Martinez used his superb control and full arsenal of pitches to get himself out of jam after jam. It amounted to one full time through the rotation without a single bad start for the Padres, who will start over with Yu Darvish in San Fransisco tonight.
The Jurickson Profar breakout season?
I don’t know if any of it will stick in any meaningful way, but Jurickson Profar is having himself a hell of a start to the season. We’re dealing with incredibly small sample sizes here, but I wanted to show you how far out of the career norms this has been for Profar.
.357 is Profar’s current batting average. His next highest batting average by season is .278, in the pandemic-shortened 2020.
.471 is his current on-base percentage. His next highest OBP by season is .343, in the pandemic-shortened 2020.
.786 is his current slugging percentage. His next highest SLG by season is either .471 with the 2012 Rangers (in 9 games as a 19 year old rookie) or .458 with the 2018 Rangers.
That’s the bad news, right? That’s the “This won’t last” answer to the fun Profar performance of this week, right? Well, allow me to have fun for a second…
.357/.471/.786
.327/.417/.519
.364/.482/.591
The top slashline is 2022. The middle one is July 2021 (25 games, 12 starts) and the last one is August 2021 (11 games, 5 starts).
If this is a hot start that will eventually cool off, it would be in line with some of the past streaky runs Profar has gone on. But there’s also reason to be very optimistic, should you choose to do so.
You can choose to believe that those months in 2021 were a sign that the former #1 prospect in baseball has figured something out. And that maybe playing under Bob Melvin, or working with new hitting coach Michael Brdar, has unlocked Profar.
We’ll see. Whatever we believe will happen for Profar probably isn’t going to change what eventually happens. Although Bob Melvin did say, when reflecting on Jurickson Profar’s game-saving catch in LF, that the team has started using him as a LF/1B only. No longer are they viewing him as a utility player that can move all over the field. Maybe that focus is helping, too.
Austin Nola is ridiculously good
I have railed against Austin Nola being the starting catcher for the Padres for the better part of a year. My reasoning has always been simple: I don’t think his body can hold up to the stresses of life as a major-league catcher. I believe that’s why he keeps getting injured.
Well, as per usual, I hope I am wrong. Because Austin Nola is really, really good.
His current OPS+ of 158 is not far from where he was with the Mariners when the Padres traded for him in 2020. Unfortunately, he quickly got injured in San Diego and then struggled to stay healthy with the Padres in 2021.
I’m not betting on Nola to stay healthy, but I am hoping for it. In addition to being one of the better hitters on the team, and one of the better offensive catchers in baseball, he also deserves some credit for how good the pitching has been to start the season.
It’s obvious that pitchers love throwing to him, he calls a good game, he does a good job with framing, and he seems to have a strong rapport with all 15 guys he seeing pitches from. I see why A.J. Preller made the gamble and got Nola. If he could ever stay healthy, he might just be the key to the Padres offense consistently scoring runs.
Bonus 4th thing: Twins!
A lot was made of Taylor Rogers and Tyler Rogers appearing in the same game last night. It’s just the 5th time a set of twins has ever appeared in the same MLB game. They got to hand in the lineup cards before the game. That’s cool, but I don’t care about it nearly as much as I care about these two things.
Taylor Rogers got the save and Tyler Rogers got the loss. That is awesome and has to be even more rare than twins appearing in the same game. (Speaking of, Steven Wilson has appeared in 2 MLB games and has 2 wins to his name. That’s cool, too!)
Taylor Rogers has been awesome. He’s throwing harder than he’s ever thrown before and getting better results, as a result. It seems like the Padres picked him up at exactly the right time to make him their closer.
Rogers has, like Profar, turned one of the pre-season worries about the Padres into an early-season strength. We couldn’t ask for anything more than that.