SAN DIEGO — Joe Musgrove got a win for the first time in six starts, even though he was unable to provide the relief the San Diego Padres were also looking for.
The right-hander who began his first season with his hometown team so spectacularly — even historically — was effective enough to hold the St. Louis Cardinals to a run in five innings but not efficient enough to get past that in what ended up a 5-4 victory over the Cardinals in the opener of a three-game series at Petco Park.
Musgrove had his pitch count get away from him in the third inning and was at 93 pitches when his night ended. After getting through the first two innings in 25 pitches, he left the bases loaded in the third inning, runners at first and second in the fourth and runners at the corners in his final inning.
For that, the Grossmont High alumnus positioned himself to get his first win in exactly five weeks, the last one having been April 9 when he walked off the field having thrown the Padres’ first-ever no-hitter.
A bullpen that has shouldered so much of the burden this season was pushed to the brink.
Craig Stammen relieved Musgrove and got four outs. Austin Adams finished the seventh before Emilio Pagan allowed Tyler O’Neill’s two-run homer in the eighth that got the Cardinals to 5-3. Mark Melancon survived Nolan Arenado’s solo home run with two outs for his major league-leading 13th save.
The depleted Padres lineup struck early. Manny Machado’s line-drive double to the gap in left-center field scored Trent Grisham, who had led off the game with an infield single.
Machado was on third with one out, but the inning ended when Brian O’Grady grounded into a double play.
O’Grady, who started in right field, was one of the five Triple-A players called up this week to take the place of the position players lost to COVID protocols — Wil Myers and Fernando Tatis Jr. because of positive tests and Eric Hosmer, Jorge Mateo and Jurickson Profar after contact tracing found them to have been in close contact with one of the positive players.
The Padres added two runs in the third inning when Cardinals starter Johan Oviedo (0-2) walked the first three batters of the inning and the final three batters he would face. O’Grady lofted a sacrifice fly to center field to bring in one run, and the other scored on Tucupita Marcano’s fielder’s choice.
After the Cardinals scored a run in the fifth, Machado’s single off the left field wall in the sixth inning returned the Padres to their three-run cushion.
Cardinals reliever Seth Elledge walked two batters and hit another, making the totals for the night 10 walks and three hit batters for St. Louis pitchers. Ha-seong Kim’s sacrifice fly made the score 5-1.
The Padres would walk twice more in the eighth, setting a team record for a nine-inning game at Petco Park.
Given the 41/2 months remaining in the season, the most significant development Friday night was arguably going to be whether Musgrove was able to work through innings in a way the Padres so desperately need.
It didn’t happen.
But what he did qualifies as a long outing for the Padres.
It was the first time in five games one of the team’s starting pitchers got through five innings, just the fifth time in 12 games this month it has happened.
Musgrove finding a way to complete two more innings would have made him the first Padres pitcher to complete six innings since Yu Darvish went 6 1/3 against the Giants on April 30. Instead, Musgrove (3-4) was the first to go five since he had done so Sunday in San Francisco.
The team’s starting pitchers entered Friday night’s game with a collective ERA of 2.99, second best in the majors. But for various reasons — sometimes injury, sometimes inefficiency, sometimes the offense’s inability to score more runs — their 171 1/3 innings were fourth fewest in the majors.
Their bullpen also had the second-lowest ERA in the majors, at 2.64. But Padres relievers had worked a total of 167 2/3 innings, second most among all big-league bullpens.
Many in the organization have stopped short of saying publicly that the pace is unsustainable. But they believe it is.
Manager Jayce Tingler did not look toward the latter innings when asked Friday how the Padres would make up for reliever Drew Pomeranz, who usually works the eighth inning, going on the 10-day injured list with a shoulder impingement.
“It would help if the starters, if Joe in particular, could go deep tonight, that would certainly help,” Tingler said.
Darvish excepted, Padres pitchers have not consistently done one of the most crucial parts of their job this season.
Darvish has five of the Padres’ eight quality starts — that is at least six innings and no more than three earned runs. Musgrove has the other three. (The team’s eight are second fewest in the major leagues.)
Musgrove is the prime candidate to immediately do some of the heavier lifting the rotation must if the Padres are to have a clear path to the playoffs without having to add reinforcements via trade or otherwise.
It has been so long since Blake Snell went six innings, it hardly seems real. And the idea of him doing so regularly is not worth fretting over at this point.
Chris Paddack, who starts Saturday night, threw three strong innings in his last start. Three. Even if the old Paddack is the new Paddack, he will likely need a couple starts to build back up his pitch count to where it becomes plausible he would throw six or seven innings.
The way Ryan Weathers attacks the strike zone, he seems built to be efficient. He starts Sunday and could be a temporary salve to the innings bleed, but he has a vague innings limit this season. That is likely somewhere just north of 100 innings, considering he was pitching for low-A Fort Wayne two years ago and Loretto (Tenn.) High three years ago. The left-hander has thrown 22 1/3 innings already, and that is with just one real start.
Musgrove’s own resume as a starter is somewhat limited when it comes to longevity, but he had gone at least six innings 44 times in his 90 career starts entering Friday. And he repeatedly done so recently.
When he allowed the Milwaukee Brewers two runs on four hits over seven innings on April 19, it was the third time in four starts this season and the fifth time in seven starts dating to last season he had gone at least six innings.
In his first four starts of 2020, the second of which was the first no-hitter in Padres history, he had a .104 ERA and allowed a .124 batting average over 26 innings.
In the three starts since, leading up to Friday, he had 6.92 ERA and had allowed a .278 average in a total of 13 innings.
