Mason Miller entered the Padres’ 1-0 win over the Dodgers at Petco Park in the ninth inning Monday to all the usual blaring lights and pomp and circumstance. But he began the outing with a very un-Miller like nine balls in his first 10 pitches, including two walks.
Suddenly the Dodgers had the tying run on second and the go-ahead run on first with none out.
The 11th pitch to Dodgers catcher Will Smith was also called a ball, but catcher Rudolfo Duran challenged it using this season’s newly instituted ABS system. The pitch was overturned for a strike and suddenly everything changed.
“Definitely,” Miller said after the game. “Any challenge that comes out in your favor is a big momentum shift, especially when I was not throwing a lot of strikes. Getting that one helped a lot.”
At the same time, Padres pitching coach Ruben Niebla came to the mound and noticed a subtle change in Miller’s usually immaculate motion. Miller made the adjustment.
“I just tightened up the front half a little bit, the lead leg,” Miller said. “Ruben brought that out to me, and I had an idea about it myself, too. I just made the adjustment and that’s what we were looking for.”
Previously Miller had been wild high, but whatever works. Smith flied to center, Max Muncy was called out on strikes and Andy Pages grounded to third, where Manny Machado applied the force.
Game over, the Padres win, theeeeee Padres win!!! (That’s with the blessings of the recently late, but always great Yankee broadcaster John Sterling.)
The 29-18 Padres are in first place over the Dodgers by a half-game in the National League West with games Tuesday and Wednesday night in this three-game series. But if the Friars can win a least one of them it will go a long way to helping them clinch their first division title since 2006.
It may be early May, but the top tiebreaker deciding first-place finishes and Wild Card spots is the record in head-to-head competition. So, if the Padres should tie the Dodgers after 162 games, their record against them in the season series is definitive – it could give them the gift of sitting out the Wild Card round.
Ask the Yankees, who finished tied last season with Toronto for the American League East, but were crushed by the Blue Jays in the season series. The Yanks had to defeat the Red Sox in a Wild Card series while the Jays had the round off. They again crushed New York in a five-game AL Division Series.
Games in May now matter as much as head-to-head competition in September and could make the difference in making the playoffs or not. The D-backs two years ago lost their season sets to the Mets and Braves. When the regular season ended all three teams were tied. The D-backs were eliminated while the Mets and Braves moved on, the Mets as far as the NL Championship Series.
That recent rule change has redefined how baseball operation staffs pursue making the playoffs.
“You have a point,” said Padres set up guy Jason Adams, who squirmed out of a self-created eighth-inning jam himself on Monday. “But we as players don’t look at it this way.”
They should. The Padres are dead last in Major League Baseball with a .223 team batting average and 12th in team pitching with a 3.93 ERA.
How are they doing it? Their bullpen is eighth with a 3.38 ERA, a 12-6 record and 18 saves. Miller has 15 of them. He’s 15 for 15 this season in his first as the club’s closer. That’s been the difference through the first third of the season.
Last season after the Padres obtained him from the A’s at the trade deadline, Miller set up for Robert Suarez, who had 40 saves and has since signed as a free agent with the Braves. The bullpen was second in the NL behind the Dodgers in 2025 with a 3.03 ERA and a 44-27 record.
The Padres had no problem letting Suarez go, replacing him with Miller. So far that’s proven to be a prescient decision.
“That’s why [general manager] A.J. [Preller] traded for him last year and we gave up a lot for Mason,” first year Padres manager Craig Stammen said, speaking about a deal that cost the Padres top shortstop prospect Leo De Vries. “We felt really good about the player we were getting in return and having control of him for a few years.
“He’s definitely lived up to the billing and is everything we wanted and needed with the Padres. I feel like he’s carried on the tradition of the Padres’ closer above and beyond.”
The all-time San Diego group includes three Hall of Famers – Trevor Hoffman, Rollie Fingers and Rich “Goose” Gossage. There’s also a National League Cy Young Award winner, Mark Davis, and a line of followers, among them Heath Bell, Huston Street, Craig Kimbrel, Josh Hader, Kirby Yates and Suarez, just to name a few.
Miller and Adams on Monday night followed seven strong innings of nine strikeout, four-hit, shutout pitching from Michael King, who earned the win.
It was Miller’s first taste of the Padres-Dodgers rivalry as closer and after a two-batter hiccup, he rose to the occasion.
“I’m always trying to pitch a perfect game, so I’d rather not see Mason in there,” King said. “But whenever it’s a close game, he’s the ace in Stammen’s back pocket and you know it’s going to be played.”
Usually well played.
