By admin 
Good morning from Los Angeles,
Neither of the two things that needed to happen last night did.
The Diamondbacks did not lose, and the Padres did not win.
It felt worse than that too.
It wasn’t worse than that. Well, probably not. The Padres just lost a game.
But it felt worse. Way worse.
It was impossible to not get 2024 National League Division Series vibes. It was in Game 4 of that year’s NLDS that the Dodgers used eight relievers in an 8-0 victory over the Padres at Dodger Stadium.
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The Dodgers used eight relievers in last night’s 7-0 victory.
It had been a while since we saw the version of the Padres we saw last night. They simply did not look up to the task against a strong opponent.
They had their best pitcher on the mound, the one they maneuvered to put there. And Michael King was awesome and then quickly turned awful.
You can read about how poorly it went in my game story (here).
Not to take the Padres batters off the hook, but this was destined to be a slog once the Dodgers scored four runs in the second inning.
Scoring a lot of runs against eight relievers in nine innings is a challenge, especially when those relievers are coming out of the Dodgers bullpen.
An offense that had hit .315 with a .911 OPS and averaged 6.6 runs over the previous 14 games managed five hits last night.
So the situation remains the same. The Padres’ magic number is two. Two wins, or a win and a Diamondbacks loss or two Diamondbacks losses mean the Padres are in the postseason.
All the streaks
Things were going well. Very well.
The Padres had won five straight games and 13 of their previous 14.
The individuals were lifting the group.
“When you’re on a winning streak like we are, the way we’re playing,” Craig Stammen said before the game, “it’s a lot of guys playing well at the same time.”
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And when you get shut out, it’s a lot of guys not playing well.
The Padres had a lot of guys streaking. Now they’re not.
- Fernando Tatis Jr. extended his on-base streak to 16 games but had his run scoring streak stopped after nine games.
- Jackson Merrill’s hitting streak ended at 11 games. Jake Cronenworth and Dustin Harris had their hitting streaks halted at 10 games.
- The Padres’ streak of scoring at least seven runs stopped after five games and their streak of scoring at least one run stopped after 23 games.
- The Padres’ streak of having at least 10 hits stopped at seven games, which had been a season high.
A switch
King threw 11 pitches in the first inning. Nine were strikes.
Eight of the nine fastballs he threw in the first were strikes. Three of them topped 96 mph, which is something he had done just 33 times in his first 31 starts.
In the second inning, King started mixing in more breaking pitches and his changeup. And they weren’t going where he wanted.
“I just lost it,” King said. “Threw a lot more off-speed pitches than I did in the first and didn’t have command of the off-speed. So leaned on those and should have stuck with the heater.”
He gave up a single on a grounder up the middle and a single on a flare before hitting a batter to load the bases and walking in two runs. Freddie Freeman then singled in two more on a sweeper in the heart of the strike zone.
In the fifth, Mookie Betts bounced a sweeper almost in the heart of the zone over the wall with two outs and Freeman followed by hitting a slider in off the plate for an RBI single. Those are two of the better fastball hitters in the major leagues.
“Just going to the report,” King said of throwing them breaking balls. “Those pitches in zone are good to those hitters, but I just couldn’t get them in zone.”
Tidbits
- Ethan Salas did not reach base in his first 15 big-league plate appearances. He has five hits and a walk in his 16 plate appearances since then after going 1-for-2 last night.
- Luis Campusano was 2-for-4 for the second time in four games. He is batting .193 with a .608 OPS over his past 25 games. He was batting .317 with a .935 OPS in the 44 games before this stretch.
- Manny Machado was 0-for-3 with a walk last night and is batting .125 (6-for-48) over his past 12 games.
- The Padres put just two balls in play with an exit velocity of 100 mph or higher last night, fewer than they had in any of their previous 28 games.
- The Padres are 3-8 against the Dodgers this season, 1-4 at Dodger Stadium.
- Jeff Sanders’ game preview (here) provided updates on Jason Adam, Miguel Andujar and Gavin Sheets. Stammen indicated all three will return to play this week. Adam is the only one in Los Angeles.
- I wrote (here) on the off day about the pitching plan the Padres instituted for the 10 days leading up to the trade deadline and how that came about.
All right, that’s it for me. Shortest newsletter of the season, and it kind of feels right.
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Talk to you tomorrow.
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This story was originally published September 23, 2026 at 7:02 AM.