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SAN DIEGO -- Five of the best relivers in baseball currently reside in San Diego. And now the Padres must figure out how, exactly, they’re going to deploy their newfound super-bullpen.
“Great problem to have,” said righty setup man Jason Adam. “Not even a problem, really.”
Flame-throwing righty Mason Miller joined the club on Friday, after he was acquired in a blockbuster deal with the A’s on Thursday morning. The Padres have played three games since Miller’s arrival. That’s a small sample, and we haven’t learned all that much.
But we know Robert Suarez seems to set to remain in the closer role, at least most of the time. We also learned that just because the Padres have those five relievers -- Adam, Suarez, Miller, Adrian Morejon and Jeremiah Estrada -- it doesn’t mean they’ll be going with their super-bullpen every night.
“I have to make it very clear right now,” said an irked Mike Shildt after the Padres dropped Saturday’s game to the Cardinals in the middle innings. “We cannot pitch five innings every night out of our bullpen with 50 games to go. You just can’t do it.”
Come October, they just might. But in the meantime, here’s a look at how the Padres might deploy their abundance of back-end relievers:
Extra rest days
This is the big one. The Padres hit the Trade Deadline with three of the sport’s most-used arms in Adam, Estrada and Morejon. Their bullpen was the best in baseball through four months. But there were questions about how it might hold up if that usage continued.
Enter Miller, and suddenly, the Padres can pick and choose which of their lockdown weapons to use and when.
“We can buy rest days for guys if they need it, we can shorten games, we can interchange with matchups,” said Adam, who entered at the start of the sixth inning on Sunday -- as early as he’s pitched all season. “It’s going to give Shildty all kinds of freedom, and it’s good for everybody.”
In order to keep that bullpen fresh for the stretch run, that will mean extra off-days for the current group of Padres relievers -- specifically, fewer back-to-backs.
Suarez at the back end?
Not necessarily every night, Shildt cautioned.
“It’s going to be fluid,” Shildt said. “We’re going to pass the ball around. Every day -- with the exception of coming off an off-day, typically -- bullpens get used. We have eight guys that we like a lot, five guys that have brought it home, tied or ahead. We’re going to go with good matchups, good lanes, and we’re going to go with freshness.”
Still, Suarez is the Major League saves leader, and the Padres don’t see much reason to move away from that formula. In his Padres debut on Friday, Miller pitched the eighth and Suarez got the ninth. Suarez again got the ninth on Sunday, and Miller seems to be on board with that plan.
“I'm happy to be here,” he said. “Hoping to make [the bullpen] an even bigger strength. … Whatever I can do to help the team win, I’m ready to do.”
Eventually, that will include closing games, with Shildt adding: “There will be opportunities for Mason to take that role down at some point.”
Chasing games
The biggest benefit of having this bullpen through the dog days is the extra rest. But the most tangible benefit, in terms of wins and losses, is the way Shildt can now manage.
The Padres play six games against the Dodgers this month. Those games might go a long way toward settling the NL West. Managers typically don’t burn high-leverage relievers when their team is behind. But with five true high-leverage weapons, Shildt has the luxury of going after games in a way most managers don’t.
If he were to use a couple high-leverage arms in a game the Padres were losing late, that gives them a better chance to stay within striking distance. If it doesn’t pan out, it won’t tax the bullpen all that much because of the reinforcements they have.
“We feel like we can stay in any game,” Adam said. “If we’re trailing, we should be able to stay in it. And if we’re up, we should be able to lock it down.”
Pressure off the starters
Nestor Cortes arrived on Sunday and was clearly awed by the array of pitching talent in his new clubhouse.
“I was joking with my friends last night, all you’ve got to do is get to the fifth inning -- possibly the fourth,” Cortes said. “Then you turn it over.”
He was kidding. But maybe only half-kidding. The Padres have two starters who are acclimating to a new environment -- Cortes and JP Sears. They have two starters with injury questions -- Yu Darvish, who returned last month, and Michael King, who could return soon.
If that group needs help, they’ve got the bullpen arms behind them to bail them out. The Padres had already mastered getting just enough out of their starters over the first four months. Now?
“It was already an incredible bullpen,” Adam said. “Now we just added a guy that throws 104. So I feel pretty good about it.”