Brewers @ Padres: The West Coast Trip Continues

The Crew stays in Southern California, traveling about an hour and a half down I-5 from Anaheim to San Diego. Milwaukee's momentum has been steady, whereas the Padres are staring down the barrel of another season where the talent and the projections don’t match the outcome. The Padres sit two games under .500 and probably feel desperation to scratch their way into Wild Card contention before the trade deadline starts looming. While the Brewers have a cozy enough lead in their division, the resurgent St. Louis Cardinals seem to have clicked and are suddenly in second place. Four fairly important games to take us toward the end of June. Will the Padres find their way into the playoff picture, or will the Brewers continue to dominate teams with losing records? Let’s break it down!

Thursday, June 20th

Bryse Wilson (4-3 3.84 ERA) vs. Adam Mazur (0-2, 7.82 ERA)
Padres righty Adam Mazur is still in the first month of his young career, making his debut on June 4th. As such, it’s not really fair to assess him while he hunts for his first career win. It could be nerves, it could be adjusting, it could be any number of things. Whatever the reason, it’s better to examine him for his strengths rather than expect him to flounder. Mazur comes equipped with a vicious 95 MPH fastball that has yielded a decent amount of swing and miss, though it should say that he isn’t overpowering batters enough to strike many of them out. Mazur will need to shake off whatever is responsible for diminishing him if he has any hope of staying in the majors when Yu Darvish or Joe Musgrove return from the injured list.

In his most recent start, Bryse Wilson came into the game against Cincinnati after Jared Koenig opened the game. Wilson pitched 5.1 innings, striking out six, walking two, and surrendering only three hits, earning himself the win. The Brewers righty has been a valuable and malleable piece in the Crew’s armory, vacillating from relief to starting to bulk relief and back again. Wilson’s relative sturdiness is highly appreciated, given the chaos in the rotation.

Friday, June 21st 

Colin Rea (6-2, 3.29 ERA) vs. Dylan Cease (6-6, 3.95 ERA)
I’m happily throwing my hands up to understand how Colin Rea continues to do what he does and just let it wash over me. The metrics-bending Rea has once again defied the prognostics and put up a fantastic start against the Reds, striking out six, yielding two earned runs, giving up four hits and one walk, and getting the W. Let’s keep the magic alive. 

The Crew gave up an elite arm but signed an expensive offensive piece (Burnes and Hoskins, respectively), which puzzled analysts everywhere about their plans. The Padres flipped that diagram, trading Soto but acquiring White Sox ace Dylan Cease, and the effect was much the same. Cease pitched to a 5.48 ERA in 2023 but was the runner-up in Cy Young voting the year prior. At 28 years old, the reality of his game seems to be fitting snugly in the middle as a fantastic, if not elite, righty. That said, the resurgent Mets demolished him in his most recent start. In only 3.2 innings, he surrendered seven runs on as many hits and walked three. 

Saturday, June 22nd

Carlos F Rodriguez (0-2, 6.48 ERA) vs. Randy Vasquez (1-4, 5.70 ERA)
It was a night to forget for Carlos F Rodriguez, who took his second L at the start of his second career. The Angels did their damage to the rookie to the tune of five runs (four earned) while striking out three in 4.2 IP. I could very well copy and paste Adam Mazur’s description for Rodriguez’s. This will be his third start; it is too early to tell what’s real and what’s not, yada-yada. It’s fair to mention that the 5.17 EA he allowed in Triple-A may indicate that he’s not genuinely ready for the majors yet, but time will have to tell. 

The NL East sure wasn’t kind to the Padres this past week. Cease was blown up by the Mets, and the Phillies touched Randy Vasquez to the brutal outcome of six earned runs in 4.1 innings. Twelve hits, two walks, and only two strikeouts. It’s Vasquez’s second year in the majors, and thus far, a pretty big step back from his debut with the Yankees in 2023 before the Bombers shipped him to San Diego as part of the Soto trade.  The issue is found in his stuff. Vasquez leans heavily on his four-seamer, but batters are hitting .302 against it, whereas last year, he held them to a .171 average on his primary pitch. He’ll need to either drastically fine-tune his fastball or rely on a more consistent mix of pitches if he will be effective. 

Sunday, June 23rd

Tobias Myers (4-2 3.26 ERA) vs. Michael King (5-4 3.49 ERA)
Tobias Myers has three straight quality starts as he continues to do his thing. Six strikeouts over 6.1 innings against the Angels in his most recent start. It was the third game in a row where he’s managed to pitch at least six innings and spare one ugly start against the White Sox. He’s been absolutely fantastic since his late April debut. In his last 20.1 IP, he’s allowed just one run. The key to his success isn’t a mystery. He has a nasty change-up and an effective enough fastball, and in his most recent start, batters had a 67% whiff rate against his slider. All he needs to do is keep it up. 

When the Padres traded the generational wunderkind Juan Soto to the Yankees, it seemed likely, reasonable even, that their competitive window was about to slam shut. Knowing what they had in Soto, it wouldn’t be cheap for the Yanks, and in the bounty they offered for him was major-league-ready Michael King. As he was in the Bronx, King has been reliably serviceable to the Friars. Despite his normally steady hand, his recent start against the Phillies ended in a no-decision as he couldn’t get through five innings. He still limited action enough not to let the game get out of hand. He has an excellent .267 xwOBA, and batters are finding it impossible to barrel the ball off of him, yielding a hard hit rate of only 31.2%, putting him in the top ten percent in the league in that category. 

Players To Watch
Jurickson Profar: Who knows how long it will last, but right now, one of the basement bargain signs of the offseason is currently leading a team in WAR. That player happens to be Jurickson Profar, the former #1 overall prospect. About 15 years ago, Profar’s name started appearing on prospect charts, and he eventually weaved his way up to that top spot. For whatever reason, that talent never really translated to elite Major League play, and 12 years into his big league career, Profar has amassed a total of 7.0 WAR. Still, 2.1 of that WAR has been accrued since the beginning of the season, and suddenly, the once glimmering prospect has a .909 OPS. If he maintains this deep into the season, he can expect more than a one-year, one-million-dollar contract. 

Luis Arraez: It seems like every season for the past three seasons, the season begins, and suddenly, Luis Arraez is mentioned among the great hitting wizards of all time. Pete Rose, Ty Cobb, and Tony Gwynn, thanks to a rare early-season blockbuster trade to the Padres. The bat has hit a bit of a chill lately, hitting only .250 in his last ten games, but Arraez remains a fun-to-watch threat who can clobber any team that takes his bat for granted.

Rhys Hoskins: It could be at first base if you’re looking for a position needing some filling. That is not exactly the problem the Brewers likely thought they’d face when they made Hoskins the big sign of the offseason. In his last seven games, Hoskins is batting .100 with no home runs and has struck out in 11 of his last 20 at-bats. Simply put, it’s an unsustainably bad performance. The good news is that a slump is a slump, and the numbers don’t match the peripherals, but they will need a pretty drastic turnaround from him if there’s any production at all to be expected from first base. 

The Hudson/Megill pairing: Hopefully, Brewers fans will get to see the fun duality in the back end of their bullpen. Assuming the Crew has a lead going into the eighth, the Padres will be staring down the disarming dynamic of a relief ace in Bryan Hudson to carry the Crew to the fireballing dominance that seems to have found its way into Trevor Megill's arm. Metrics and analysis aside, it's simply a lot of fun to watch.

Predictions: Much like the Angels, the Padres' theme is deflated expectations. Despite the prodigious star power that’s found its way on and off the Padres roster over the last half a decade or so, the chemistry has never gelled with enough efficacy to see them truly take on the Dodgers or go deep into the playoffs. That said, they are still at home, and it’s a four-game set… so I’ll play it safe and say the Crew and Padres split.