SAN DIEGO — OK, so it took a couple games. But these Padres are starting to look like themselves. Which is to say, these Padres are starting to look like the star-studded, complete team they are on paper – the team viewed by many as a bona fide World Series contender.
San Diego earned itself a split of its season-opening four-game series against the Rockies with a 3-1 victory on Sunday afternoon at Petco Park, played in a crisp two hours, three minutes. Right-hander Seth Lugo was excellent in his Padres debut, pitching seven innings of one-run ball and requiring only 93 pitches to do so.
“First look, I don’t know how it could be any better,” Padres manager Bob Melvin said of Lugo, who had spent most of the past five seasons pitching in relief for the Mets.
The 33-year-old Lugo signed with the Padres this winter, in part because they planned to give him an opportunity to start. He’s already making the most of it. Lugo matched a career high with his seven innings, and Ryan McMahon’s solo homer in the seventh was the only damage against him.
Otherwise, Lugo allowed just three singles and was a strike-throwing machine. He threw first-pitch strikes to 21 of the 24 hitters he faced, including the first 15.
“I was challenging them,” Lugo said. “’Swing at it if you want.’”
Added catcher Austin Nola: “Really, it’s so important to go from 0-1 vs. 1-0. … The difference in that one pitch is the chess match we’re trying to play.”
Lugo, making his first start since 2020 and the first April start of his career, wasn’t supposed to pitch seven innings, Melvin admitted afterward. But those first-pitch strikes enabled him to be so efficient that he earned it.
“It’s just the mindset that he has coming in,” Melvin said. “He wants to cut down on his pitch count. Throwing strike one not only allows you to do that some, but it also gets the hitter on the run with the unpredictability.
And was Lugo ever unpredictable on Sunday. Known best for his high-spin curveball, he leaned heavily on his fastball instead. That wasn’t the plan going in. But it was working, so he and Nola stuck with it.
“It looks like it’s [low],” Nola said of Lugo’s heater. “He gets so on top of it that it kind of has a little ride on it. And, man, if you’re a hitter and you commit to that, you’re in trouble with the curveball. So you’ve got to pick your poison with what you’re looking for.”
The Padres, in no uncertain terms, are counting on Lugo. They filled out the back end of their rotation with two pitchers who have posted notably better numbers in their careers when they have pitched out of the bullpen — Lugo and fellow righty Nick Martinez.
The Padres believe in the abilities of both as starting pitchers. But it still qualifies as a risk to entrust two of the six spots in your rotation to pitchers with question marks as starters.
One weekend doesn’t answer all of those questions. But it helps. Both Martinez and Lugo went seven innings in their respective season debuts. Both showcased a deeper array of pitches than what they used as relievers.
“We’ve got a seven-man bullpen,” said Melvin. “Our starters need to do their thing. They definitely have.”
While Lugo was dealing on Sunday, San Diego scored three runs in the third inning to account for the entirety of its offense. Trent Grisham launched a solo homer to open the scoring. Two batters later, Xander Bogaerts hit his second two-run homer in as many games. The Padres’ new shortstop had hits in all four games in the series.
From the third inning onward, the Padres mustered only one hit — a bloop behind first base that C.J. Cron misplayed into a single. But, in a way, it was still a prime example of the potency of this new-look lineup.
“It’s a sense that you can strike quickly,” Melvin said. “And we did with the two home runs. We didn’t get a ton of hits today. But they had an effect and gave us a lead.
“With Seth pitching the way he was, it felt like, even though it was a close game — 3-0 for a while, then 3-1 — that we were in control of it.”
