Sunday, October 18

Welcome back to the Padres Beat newsletter. MLB.com content producer Jacob Gurvis pinch-hit for this edition.

Walker Buehler may never recapture his 2021 form, when he finished fourth in the National League Cy Young race after posting a 16-4 record with a 2.47 ERA and 212 strikeouts.

But in his quest for a career renaissance, the 31-year-old righty is giving plenty of reasons for optimism.

Buehler tossed five innings of one-run ball in the Padres’ 5-2 win over the Orioles in Baltimore on Sunday, his first win since May 16 in Seattle. Buehler struck out five, walked none and gave up just one run, a solo homer.

It was a continuation of a recent run of dominance from the former first-round pick, who lowered his season ERA to 4.14. Over his past seven starts, Buehler owns a 2.92 ERA with 29 punchouts in 37 innings and only 10 walks (four of which came in one outing). 

He’s been even better in June, with a 1.72 ERA and 15 K’s through three starts.

In Sunday’s outing, Buehler induced 10 whiffs on 46 swings, while seeing improved velocity on six of his seven pitches. His cutter, which averaged 91 mph -- 0.9 mph above his season average -- accounted for two of his strikeouts, including a nasty 89.7 mph offering to get Adley Rutschman looking in a key spot in the fifth.

"I think that cutter has become more and more my signature pitch,” Buehler said. “[I] made a good [pitch in] a big spot for me and the offense took care of the rest.”

Buehler’s strikeout and walk numbers were each moving in the wrong direction since he’d returned from his second Tommy John surgery after missing the 2023 season. Last year, his walk rate spiked to 10.6%, more than double what it had been earlier in his career (5% in 2019). 

At the same time, his strikeout rate had dipped to 16.3%, which put him in the bottom 9% of MLB pitchers. His K% hovered between 26-29% for the first five years of his career.

So far in 2026, those trends have begun to return to their pre-2024 norms for Buehler. His strikeout rate  is back around 20%, while his walk rate has dropped back to single-digits. After walking north of four batters per nine innings in ‘25, it’s down below three now. These numbers aren’t elite, but they’re much better.

With Nick Pivetta, Joe Musgrove, Matt Waldron and Germán Márquez all sidelined with injuries -- not to mention Yu Darvish, who is out for the year -- Buehler’s continued progress would be a boon for the Padres. 

San Diego entered Monday with a 4.58 combined ERA from its starters, which ranks 22nd in baseball. Fellow veteran Lucas Giolito has seen mixed results in his first five starts since joining the Padres last month, but he’s also looked better of late. The 31-year-old, who was a teammate of Buehler’s with the ‘25 Red Sox, has allowed three earned runs with eight strikeouts across eight innings in June.

Michael King, who re-signed with the Padres over the winter, has held down the fort as the staff’s ace, with a 3.46 ERA and 72 strikeouts through his first 14 starts.

Pivetta and Musgrove aren’t expected back until the second half, while Márquez and Waldron (who may return as a reliever) are a bit ahead of them. There’s plenty of baseball left -- 92 games to be exact. The Padres are currently seven games back of the Dodgers in the NL West and hold the third NL Wild Card spot.

But if the Padres plan to play deep into October, they’ll need their starting staff to continue stepping up. And with a full starting five on the IL, it’s role players like Buehler who hold the keys to that success.

Few things are as terrifying as a 90+ mph fastball coming right at your head. Xander Bogaerts would know.

The Padres veteran exited Saturday's game after taking a 93.5 mph four-seamer off the helmet from Orioles pitcher Trey Gibson. He initially stayed in the game before exiting an inning later. 

“Yeah, it was ugly, you know,” Bogaerts said. “I got hit [with a] Félix Hernández changeup. I feel like I got hit in my head another time. I don't really recall. But this one was [bad].”

Luckily it wasn’t too bad. Bogaerts returned to the lineup on Sunday, going 0-for-3 with a walk. 

Losing Bogaerts for any period would have been a hard pill to swallow for the Padres, who have been ravaged by injuries this season. In addition to the pitchers who are hurt, Jake Cronenworth, Miguel Andujar, Ramón Laureano, Luis Campusano and Freddy Fermin -- the last of whom exited Saturday's game right after Bogaerts with a concussion when he took a warm-up pitch to the mask -- are all on the IL, too.

After taking two out of three from the Orioles, the Padres head to St. Louis to take on the 38-31 Cardinals, who sit in second place in the NL Central. The Padres have won four of six while taking two straight series. The Cardinals have lost three of their past four games.

The two clubs split a four-game series May 7-10. The Padres won the season series, 4-3, in 2025, while the Cards own the all-time head-to-head regular season matchup, with a 307-219 record.

This week, the Padres will face Dustin May (4.21 ERA), Andre Pallante (3.88) and Kyle Leahy (4.64).

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