NEW YORK -- Mike Shildt wasn’t around to see it. He’d just thrown his glasses amid a heated argument with home-plate umpire Adrian Johnson, so who knows if he even could have. But the Padres pulled off a heck of a comeback on Monday night at a rain-soaked Yankee Stadium.
The type of resilient comeback that has come to define the early portion of their 2025 season.
Moments after Shildt and Fernando Tatis Jr. were ejected for arguing, the Padres staged a dramatic eighth-inning rally, scoring four times with two outs as they erased a three-run deficit in an instant. It added up to a 4-3 victory over the Yankees in the opening game of this week’s heavyweight Interleague clash.
“They all are equal in the [win] column,” Shildt said. “But this one has an even deeper entrench of who we are and how we compete. It’s just the fabric of this club: The grit squad.”
Held scoreless through seven innings, the Padres brought Tatis to the plate as the tying run with one out in the eighth. He struck out swinging but took issue with a strike-two call that was either at or just below the knees.
Tatis turned and had words for Johnson, who promptly ejected him -- the first of Tatis’ career, and the first he can remember since he was a youngster playing in the Dominican Winter League. What did he say?
“What did I say?” Tatis paused and cracked a smile. “I forgot.”
Whatever he said, Shildt vehemently disagreed with the ejection and came storming onto the field. He threw his lineup card, threw his pen and -- this might be a new one -- threw his glasses. Shildt got his money’s worth -- and perhaps fired up his team in the process.
“I love Mike Shildt,” said Luis Arraez, who was on deck at the time. “He supports his players. When I saw that thing, I said: ‘We’ll come back.’”
Sure enough, Arraez proceeded to walk on four pitches, loading the bases and bringing Manny Machado to the plate, as the Yankees lifted Devin Williams for Luke Weaver. Machado laced a two-run double into the left-field corner, and Xander Bogaerts followed with a go-ahead two-run single.
Out of nowhere, the Padres had a lead.
“You can see what kind of team we are, man,” Tatis said. “Everyone has each other’s back over here.”
The San Diego offense was stifled across 6 2/3 dominant innings from left-hander Carlos Rodón. Opposite Rodón, Padres righty Nick Pivetta was mostly solid. But he allowed a two-run homer to former Padre Trent Grisham, then an unearned run during a rain-soaked sixth inning.
It rained for most of the night and poured intermittently. Pivetta (and Rodón) dealt with two 28-minute rain delays -- one before first pitch and one in the bottom of the fourth. Prior to the fourth-inning delay, a drenched Pivetta was clearly struggling to grip the baseball. But he returned to finish the frame, then held the Yankees mostly in check.
San Diego’s lockdown bullpen did the rest, as rookie Ryan Bergert earned his first career win with a scoreless seventh. As usual, that bullpen -- and its MLB-best 1.68 ERA -- was an undercurrent to a comeback victory, already the Padres’ ninth of the season.
“That’s kind of the M.O. of this team is the grit and never giving up until the last out of the game,” said Tyler Wade, whose one-out walk started the eighth-inning comeback. “That was a great win for us.”
Following Wade’s walk, Brandon Lockridge hit a two-strike bloop single -- two former Yankees sparking a rally against their old club. Then came Shildt’s theatrics.
“It was one of those [ejections] that kind of got us going,” Bogaerts said.
“I loved that,” Tatis said. “Mike always has our back, and he shows that in every way possible.”
No, Tatis didn’t actually forget what he said. Afterward, he was noncommittal as to whether he believed it warranted an ejection. He had never been ejected before, after all -- “I didn’t know what to expect,” he said.
Shildt, on the other hand, was clearly convicted. So much so that he let loose his glasses. He wasn’t sure he’d ever pulled that move before. But amid the tirade, the Padres' skipper was composed enough to avoid throwing them into the dirt.
“I made sure they stayed in the grass,” Shildt said, sitting at his desk postgame, glasses in hand. “I don’t want them scratched. I like these glasses a lot.”