Padres’ playoff run bolstered by bullpen with ‘different looks, different angles’

SAN DIEGO — One day in the summer of 2017, Jason Adam stumbled upon an unexpected elixir.

The right-hander was attempting to come back from a fourth surgery on his right elbow. A former fifth-round draft pick by the Royals, he had not made a professional appearance in more than two years. He’d joined the Padres on a minor-league deal that winter, and he was still rehabbing at their spring training complex in sweltering Peoria, Ariz., although that wasn’t the toughest part.

This was: Every time he played catch, it hurt.

Amid his discomfort, Adam thought back to one of his instructors, a private pitching coach based outside of San Diego. Dominick Johnson espoused his own core principles. One involved getting his pupils’ arms inside 90 degrees of elbow flexion at foot strike. What if, Adam wondered, he simply started inside 90 degrees?
So, during a session of long toss, he cocked his forearm back by his ear, took a step forward and unleashed a throw. “I was like, ‘Well, that doesn’t hurt,’” Adam recalled. Weeks later, as he approached his 26th birthday, he debuted the shortened arm action in a rookie-ball game.

“I knew I was on my last leg,” Adam said, “so I was like, ‘What’s the risk in trying this?’”

His hunch was right; the Padres released Adam that August. Meanwhile, his new delivery stuck. He beat the odds the following May by reaching the majors with his hometown Royals. But it wasn’t until the early 2020s, with the Tampa Bay Rays, that Adam blossomed into a top setup man. And it wasn’t until this summer that the Padres traded one of their top prospects to reacquire him.

That reunion could soon prove critical. On Wednesday, as they swept the Atlanta Braves out of the postseason, the Padres lost Joe Musgrove — Johnson’s godson and one of the team’s best starters — to an elbow injury. This weekend, as they open a titanic National League Division Series at Dodger Stadium, the Padres may have to forge ahead without Musgrove.

Against a seemingly vulnerable Los Angeles team, the visitors retain enough rotation depth to feel good about their chances. However, their bevy of high-leverage relievers might provide the greatest sense of comfort.

The Padres possess ample late-inning firepower. They also have a diversity of approaches, including Adam’s especially brief arm stroke, and thus plenty of ability to shorten games.

“Some of the best bullpens in baseball are constructed like that — guys with different angles, different looks, different attacks,” pitching coach Ruben Niebla said. “So I’m glad we have that.”

Jason Adam’s 3Ks in the 8th. pic.twitter.com/TVe9bBzkMy

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) October 2, 2024

On Sept. 24, Michael King overcame an inflated pitch count to complete five innings without allowing an earned run. The Padres entered the bottom of the sixth at Dodger Stadium with a 4-1 lead. That was when manager Mike Shildt set into motion a potential preview of October.

Hard-throwing left-hander Adrian Morejon took the mound and got a pair of quick outs before permitting a single and a walk. Morejon was replaced by Jeremiah Estrada, a right-handed waiver claim with a 99th-percentile strikeout rate. Estrada, on this night, would not need any swing-and-miss; he threw a single pitch, and it resulted in an inning-ending popout.

In the bottom of the seventh, with Shohei Ohtani looming in the hole, Shildt turned to the main prize of the Padres’ trade deadline. All-Star lefty Tanner Scott yielded a leadoff single, induced a double play and struck out Ohtani on three pitches. An inning later, Adam worked around a two-out double to preserve the lead.

In the bottom of the ninth, fastball-pumping closer Robert Suarez gave up three consecutive singles. That brought the Dodger Stadium crowd to its feet, Miguel Rojas to the plate and Ohtani to the on-deck circle.

A triple play and a celebration ensued. Amid their revelry, it was not exactly how the Padres had drawn up clinching a playoff berth. Still, the outcome was what they envisioned when they unloaded much of their farm system in late July.

“I think we knew it was going to be a really competitive pennant race,” Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller said this week. “We basically have been playing playoff games since the All-Star break and since the trade deadline. We knew we were going to be playing some really close games, tight games. We needed to have a deep bullpen … and then, obviously getting here to October, (when) having a deep ’pen is always a good thing.”

Before Scott’s debut on Aug. 3, the Padres bullpen produced a 4.12 ERA (13th in the majors) and a 23.7 percent strikeout rate (12th). From that point on, San Diego relievers supplied a 3.06 ERA (fifth) and a 27 percent strikeout rate (fifth). An upgraded collection of high-leverage arms blends upper-90s velocity with a variety of arm slots and, because of the absence of drastic platoon splits, a fair amount of interchangeability.

“There’s not a ton of ‘handy’-ness there,” Shildt said. “They’re able to get righties and lefties out.”

Adam, for example, limited right-handed hitters in the regular season to a .541 OPS. He was even better against lefty batters, who managed a .456 OPS.

“He just spins the ball so well, whether it’s fastball, changeup or breaking ball. Like, he gets such good drive behind all his pitches,” catcher Kyle Higashioka said. “I noticed, with the short arm action, a lot of guys have a really explosive pitch package.”

Scott, working with an unusually low arm slot, takes a different approach. “He’s electric-heater, nasty-slider. You pretty much know what you’re gonna get from him,” Higashioka said. “It’s just the stuff is so good that it’s like, ‘Good luck.’”

After closing for the Miami Marlins, Scott has proven to be a particularly versatile weapon. For San Diego, he has pitched in every inning from the sixth to the 10th. The Padres learned early on that, to ready himself to enter a game, Scott does not require much more than a handful of warmup pitches.

“I kind of pride myself on being ready in any situation as quick as I can,” Scott said. “If certain stuff happens, I can be ready like that. I think it’s a good thing to have.”

Vaunted as it might be, the Padres bullpen has exhibited concerning signs.

Suarez, with his heater-heavy ways, has struggled to generate whiffs consistently since early August. Scott, the most obvious alternative for the ninth, arrived with a 14.8 walk rate. In the eighth inning of Wednesday’s clincher against Atlanta, Adam served up a two-run shot to Michael Harris II.

For Adam, it also was just his second home run allowed since he joined San Diego. Before and after his outing, the Padres again demonstrated how they can shorten a game.

Musgrove’s elbow forced him from the mound in the fourth. Shildt went to Bryan Hoeing, who accompanied Scott in the deal from Miami, and the right-hander covered the next four outs. Estrada retired a pair of batters in the sixth. Scott finished the inning and took down the next one, as well. Adam’s blip came in the eighth. Suarez threw a 1-2-3 ninth, setting off another Champagne celebration.

As they partied inside their clubhouse, Musgrove and Niebla separately revealed that the starter had been dealing with elbow tightness for at least a week. The Padres had gone into the game knowing they might need to lean on a relatively fresh bullpen. King’s seven brilliant innings the previous night had come at a convenient time.

“We knew that every guy today had at least four outs in them,” Niebla said. “We were able to piece that together knowing we were capable of doing that.”

“All year long, we’ve gone through injuries, and we’ve had guys step up,” Preller said. “We’ve got a lot of talented guys, just not three or four guys on this team. Not just the 26-, but the 40-man roster.”

As the Padres prepare to re-enter the fray at Dodger Stadium, much of the attention will be trained on the quintet at the back of their bullpen.

(Photo of Jason Adam: Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)