Tag Archives: Jayce Tingler

Accountability isn’t dead, entirely

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Emilio Pagan

Emilio Pagan, relief pitcher, avatar of self-accountability.

When players hold themselves accountable, not ducking the harder questions, it’s admirable and—to enough people—rare enough. When a player willing to hold himself accountable seeks to do so without being asked first, that’s not just somewhat out of the standard box, it ought to give him some kind of share of some kind of prize.

Case in point: Emilio Pagán, Padres relief pitcher. In a game meaning nothing to the Padres anymore but everything to the Dodgers Wednesday night, the Dodgers bludgeoned Pagán and fellow bullpen bull Nabil Crismatt for five home runs—Pagan for three, Crismatt for two.

All when the Padres entered the bottom of the eighth holding a nice 9-6 lead including battering Max Scherzer, of all people, for six runs in six innings. The inning ended with the Dodgers leading 11-9, holding on to win by that score Wednesday night, and the Padres wondering further just when things like a disconnect between the clubhouse and the front office would be redressed.

Pagán got torn back-to-back by Max Muncy and A.J. Pollock, then by Cody Bellinger one out later, to tie the game. Crismatt got pounded for the one that mattered, Corey Seager’s two-out, two-run shell into the right field bleachers to yank the Dodgers ahead. Some thought that eighth-inning meltdown was too emblematic of the Padres’ seasonal dissipation.

They were supposed to win the West this year, right? They were anointed World Series champions in waiting this year, by enough commentators, right? They had the hottest young star in baseball this side of Shohei Ohtani, a solid pitching staff, and were just itching to lay the division to waste, if not the league, right? That’s what you all heard too much of coming out of spring training, right?

Didn’t happen. And while plenty of teams had to find ways around the ferocious enough injury bugs this year, the Padres couldn’t and didn’t, if not wouldn’t.

They became testy in the clubhouse as the season went forward. Enough players reportedly became more disillusioned with oft-overwhelmed manager Jayce Tingler. Enough became just as dismayed by seemingly half-connected general manager A.J. Preller, whose reputed genius at scouting and building was undermined this year by failures at true fortification at the trade deadline and a sense that he’s out of touch with his clubhouse, willfully or otherwise.

So when Pagán buttonholed San Diego Union-Tribune writer Kevin Acee, Acee was only too willing to listen and write. The righthander who surrendered the home run that just about killed what remained of the Padres’ season in St. Louis—Tyler O’Neill’s two-run blast in the bottom of the eighth on 18 September—had more to say.

He’s said in the recent past how nice it is to be part of a team as talented as the Padres actually are. But now, by holding himself up to task, he implied without saying that such talented teams should be just as accountable above and beyond the real issues beyond their control.

“We scored nine runs in a game that Max Scherzer starts,” Pagán told Acee. “You’ve got to win that game. I mean, plain and simple. I love this game too much to not look at the numbers and not look at the results like I’ve got to take some of this. I can’t just be upset, I’ve got to look at it and grow from it and come into next series, next season a better pitcher.”

Acee indicated the two spoke after Pagán reviewed video of his outing, asked coaches whether he was tipping pitches, pondered trying to develop a third pitch during the offseason, and lamented that he felt his pitches were both getting better in the season’s second half but he was “getting my teeth kicked in. So it hasn’t been a lot of fun.

“I’m going to look at everything because, as laughable as this comment is, I’m just too good for this,” Pagán continued. “I know type of talent that I can be on the mound. Unfortunately for the San Diego Padres organization I haven’t been what I can. And that’ll change. If I’m kept around, I will get better. I don’t know if I’ve been this angry in a long time at my individual performance on a baseball field, so I’ll get better. I care about this game too much to not get better.”

A 2.31 ERA for the 2019 Rays suggests Pagán can still fix whatever went wrong for him this season. An attitude such as he showed in seeking Acee out before the scribe could seek and question him first suggests wisdom beyond his 30 years.

“In these times of pandemic-induced postgame zooms,” Acee wrote, “the media often does not get to immediately speak to players involved in key plays. But Pagán, being both a veteran who has been around when clubhouses have been open and an honorable man, was willing to face questions before I could even ask if he would.”

Preller seems to leave somewhat different and contradictory impressions, according to Athletic writers Ken Rosenthal, Dennis Lin, and Eno Sarris:

The combination of an untested manager, veteran coaches with strong personalities and prominent players with strong personalities has sometimes proven volatile. A pair of confrontations in the dugout two weeks ago . . . attracted national attention, but according to sources, there have been an unusual number of heated moments this season, including when the Padres were well above .500. Some of the same sources have questioned whether front-office executives have enough empathy for those navigating complex situations inside the clubhouse.

“I don’t think (Preller) feels that at all,” said one former coach.

If there’s a further shakeup in the Padres’ offseason to come, it seems as though few would be surprised. If a new, more experienced and attuned manager is on the priority list, it may be easier said than done bringing aboard someone else Preller may or may not think he can command at will.

Whomever it proves to be, he’ll have at least one veteran relief pitcher on board with the concept and the continuing practise of accountability.

Manny Machado teaches a hard-learned lesson

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Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis, Jr.

Machado gestures emphatically while putting Tatis in his place in the fifth Saturday night.

More often than I care to admit, I miss the real fun stuff. That’s when I have to play catch-up as best I can with what I have.

On Saturday night, I watched my Mess (er, Mets) lose to the Phillies, 5-3, because the game was available to me on Fox Sports via Hulu.

But out in St. Louis, there were Padres veteran Manny Machado and boy wonder Fernando Tatis, Jr. having it out as the sides began changing in the middle of the fifth in St. Louis.

There, moreover, was Machado actually behaving like a team leader in the bargain. Go ahead and say it, until now you thought putting Machado and “team leader” in the same sentence was the equivalent of mining a diamond with a dental pick. But hear me out.

In both games, both sides spent enough time chirping over, shall we say, floating strike zones—the Mets and the Phillies about plate umpire C.B. Bucknor’s, the Padres and the Cardinals about their plate umpire Phil Cuzzi’s. That isn’t exactly new business when it comes to that pair of arbiters.

But the worst out of either the Mets or the Phillies  about Bucknor in Citi Field was chirping. In Busch Stadium, Tatis didn’t just take it when Cuzzi rang him up on a called, full-count, third strike from Cardinals starting pitcher Adam Wainwright leading off the top of the fifth.

The Padres led 2-0 at the time, in a game they absolutely had to win to stay alive in the National League wild-card race. First, Tatis gave an obviously frustrated sigh. Then, he bent his head over his left shoulder and made a few body-language movements plus some utterances . . . but he did it facing away from Cuzzi.

The bad news is that replays showed Cuzzi actually called the pitch right. It hit just under the strike zone ceiling. The worse news for the moment was Padres manager Jayce Tingler hustling out of the dugout to argue the call, trying to protect his player, but getting himself tossed post haste.

As Tingler got the ho-heave, Tatis returned to the dugout and banged the bench a few times in his frustration. Then, apparently, he continued grumbling about that third strike as the inning went forward, with Jake Cronenworth stranded on second following a one-out double. Machado is known to have befriended Tatis personally, but he’d also had more than enough of whatever bellyaching Tatis continued during the inning.

The next thing anyone knew, Machado could be heard hollering clearly enough at Tatis, Go play baseball! You play baseball. You can’t worry about that sh@t! You go play baseball! [Fornicate] that sh@t! Tatis must have tried to interject something about the disputed strike right there, because Machado then hollered, No, it’s not. It’s not about you! It’s not [fornicating] about you! Go [fornicating] play baseball.

Then the Padres’ veteran third baseman and their youthful superstar shortstop went back to the field to continue [fornicating] playing baseball.

The Padres lead held until the bottom of the eighth, when Cardinals third baseman Tommy Edman lofted a one-out sacrifice fly, first baseman Paul Goldschmidt wrung Padres reliever Emilio Pagan for a walk, and left fielder Tyler O’Neill hit a 2-2 cutter into the left field bullpen.

Perhaps ironically, two innings before that blast, O’Neill was no more thrilled with Cuzzi’s strike zone than any Padre on the night. He simply didn’t let mere frustration turn into a fuming that might require a Cardinal veteran or two dressing him down on the spot before the ump might throw him out.

“That was a great job by him not getting too animated there,” said Wainwright, who’d surrendered only a pair of RBI singles to Victor Caratini and Tommy Pham in the top of the fourth. “If we lose him right there, we probably lose the game . . . That was a lot of maturity by him to not get thrown out right there on some tough calls.”

O’Neill’s blast overthrew the lead Padres starter Yu Darvish handed the Padres bullpen after seven shutout innings during which he’d allowed a mere three hits while striking nine Cardinals out. The Padres had no answer in return against Cardinals reliever Giovanny Gallegos in the top of the ninth, with their own veteran first baseman Eric Hosmer striking out swinging on a slightly high fastball to end it.

Machado and Tatis had to be separated by Padres coach Ryan Flaherty before they returned to the field. Post-game, Tingler said only that the dustup wasn’t viewed “negatively” around the team that’s now lost 23 of their last 33 games after entering the season practically crowned the World Series winners-to-be by an awful lot of people now dining on roast crow.

“I’m sure people on the outside think it’s whatever they think, but we’re family,” Tingler told the press. “We’re not going to discuss the details, but we care. There’s passion, there’s frustration. Those are all emotions that are natural and those things happen. But it comes down to a group of men caring.”

The details were captured on more than one video that went slightly viral within moments of the dustup ending, as things turned out. Then the real focus became Machado, who once had a reputation for just the kind of petulance over which he’d now dressed Tatis down so dramatically and, shall we say, colourfully.

Those trying to score the dressing-down as just another example of Machado still being a self-centered pain in the rump roast might be shocked to discover a former Padre, Will Middlebrooks, tweeting very much otherwise in the immediate wake:

I know people will take the angle of “Machado is a bad teammate”…but you couldn’t be more wrong here. This was a leadership move. Let’s not forget FTJ is still 22. A phenomenal player, but still a lot to learn. Tatis can’t get tossed in the 5th inning of a game they need to win.

During an exchange featuring more than a few dissenting tweeters, Middlebrooks added, “History tells me that Machado had the experiences to know better. He’s grown up a lot and learned from his past.”

The Padres didn’t make either Machado or Tatis available to the press after the game. But a week earlier, Machado spoke to Athletic writer Britt Ghrioli, during a weekend on which the Padres lost twice to the Dodgers. Machado only began by saying he’d learned some things at last.

There’s a time and place for everything. In Baltimore, I was young. I was just there to play. There were other guys that were leaders—Adam (Jones), J.J. (Hardy), (Matt) Wieters . . . Now, obviously, it’s different. Guys are looking up to me.

I think what’s happening now in this game is we are losing track of the older guys, the respect of the veterans, guys who have been here and done it a long time. You got to earn that respect; you got to earn that role. It’s not just given. A lot of players now are just expected to be the guy [when they reach the majors]. But I’m old-school baseball; I want to teach it how I was taught.

When you are young you make a lot of mistakes. You make mistakes as you grow and hopefully you learn from them, you gain experience. You [fornicate] up again, give your thoughts and learn from it again. That’s what it’s about. I messed up a lot at a young age, like a lot of people, but you take that and you try to learn from it. I’m at the point now where — I’ll be 30 [next year], I want to win. I just want to win.  And I think we can do that here.

“I would say Manny’s done a good job with all his leadership throughout the year,” Tingler said, though he refused again to speak of the deets involving the dugout dustup. “But I would say Manny being able to share his experience and share his past experiences of coming up in the league is a good thing.”

It hasn’t turned Machado into a grump refusing to let the kids play. He still has clear fun playing the game. It’s simply made him one of the adults in the room who knows from bitter experience when the kids can’t afford to get sent to bed without their supper and tries to stop it as best he can with what he has.

While all that happened, I was watching Phillies second baseman Jean Segura hit a pair of solo homers in the first and third off Mets starter Carlos Carrasco. I watched Mets center fielder Brandon Nimmo hit a one-out triple off the top of the right field wall and score on an infield ground out in the sixth to cut the deficit in half.

But I also watched Bryce Harper hit a two-run double in the seventh off Mets relief retread Brad Hand to put the game just out of the Mets’ reach. The other guys have now hit .357 off Hand since the Mets lifted him from the waiver wire at the beginning of this month.

And, after Mets reliever Miguel Castro sank into but escaped a bases-loaded jam with no further Phillies scoring in the top of the eighth, I saw Nimmo hit one over the right field fence to lead their half off but no further Met scoring the rest of the way.

It put the Phillies a mere game behind the Braves in the NL East, with the Braves losing to the Giants, 2-0, in San Francisco. It also kept the Mets five and a half out of first in the East but pushed them to seven games back in the wild card race. The Phillies knock on the door of improbability; the Mets—now losers of five straight—are only a step or three from going through the floor.

Catching up to the Padres and their once-unexpected adult in the room in St. Louis proved just as intriguing.

One night in the San Diego zoo

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Will Smith

Will Smith had no idea in the moment that the game-tying homer he hit in the eighth Wednesday night would lead to hoisting Manfredball and enough of the old school by their own petards.

There it was. An extra-inning game that went sixteen innings and exposed both the worst possible side of Rob Manfred’s would-be new-school tinkerings and the worst possible side of the old school’s ongoing romance with insisting the worst bats in the lineup hold a place in the order.

What do you call a game in which each team got a free cookie on second base to open each extra half inning and, for five full innings straight, none of those cookies got eaten? That’s right: ten cookies on second to open ten half-innings in San Diego on Wednesday night, and not a one of them came home.

Zombieball? Manfredball? Your Sham of Shows? Monty Python and the Holy Hell? The Smothered Brothers Comedy Hours? A ballpark named for a pet store chain as the world’s largest zoo arena—with the animals holding the keys?

Until the Dodgers’ A.J. Pollock hit a leadoff two-run homer (that sounds bizarre to say, right, but that’s the Zombie Runner Era for you) in the top of the sixteenth, the longest extra-inning game since Manfred imposed the free cookie on second to open each extra half-inning was thirteen innings.

Pollock’s blast pretty much finished a 5-3 Dodger win in which Padres manager Jayce Tingler outsmarted himself with lineup maneuverings that brought his pitchers into batting behind Fernando Tatis, Jr., Manny Machado, and Jake Cronenworth with his bench emptied out previously.

It compelled Dodger manager Dave Roberts to do exactly what the now-retired Thomas Boswell pointed to as one of his prime reasons for finally deciding the designated hitter needed to be universal and permanently so:

It’s fun to see Max Scherzer slap a single to right field and run it out like he thinks he’s Ty Cobb. But I’ll sacrifice that pleasure to get rid of the thousands of rallies I’ve seen killed when an inning ends with one pitcher working around a competent No. 8 hitter so he can then strike out the other pitcher. When you get in a jam in the AL, you must pitch your way out of it, not ‘pitch around’ your way out of it.

Roberts forced Tingler’s hand twice—in the thirteenth, when his empty bench forced him to send pitcher Ryan Weathers out to the plate after intentional walks to Machado and Cronenworth to load the pads (Victor Caratini opened as the cookie on second); and, in the fifteenth, when Tingler had no choice but to let reliever Daniel Camarena bat after Cronenworth was handed another free pass.

Weathers at least made contact: a bouncer back to the mound that ended in an inning-ending force out at the plate. Camarena, a relief pitcher in his first Show turn who somehow managed to pick up a base hit in two previous unlikely plate appearances, looked at a full-count third strike.

“I liked the pitcher-versus-pitcher matchup,” said Roberts, after the Dodgers finally ended the sixteen-inning, 5-3 Dodger win. Show me a manager who wouldn’t love a pitcher-versus-pitcher matchup, knowing how often it won’t end in game-breaking hits, walk-off wins, or even absurd transient pleasures, and I’ll show you a manager in search of a job.

As of Friday morning the pitchers in 2021 posted a .109/.148/.140 slash line and a .288 OPS. The only “strategy” involved Wednesday night—remember, the Old Fart Contingency insists that keeping pitchers in the batting order keeps “strategy” in the game—was the opposing manager maneuvering his opponent into sending pitchers to the plate for all-but-automatic outs.

Wasn’t the game fun otherwise? Sure it was. Sure it was a kick watching Walker Buehler and Blake Snell duel like James Bond vs. the Green Hornet. Sure it was a kick watching Tatis guarantee a sixteenth inning when he smashed a one-out two-run homer in the bottom of an inning in which the Dodgers broke the elongated one-all tie with back-to-back RBI singles.

So how much fun was it, really, to watch the Dodgers hand out eight intentional walks during the game . . . all of them from the eleventh through the fifteenth? I didn’t think so, either.

Trivia, courtesy of the irrepressible Hall of Fame writer Jayson Stark: The Orioles—who stupefied everyone else by following their nineteen-game losing streak-ending 10-6 win over the Angels Wednesday night by bludgeoning the Angels 13-1 Thursday night—have issued eight intentional walks while facing 5,168 batters in the last full calendar year. Whatever else is wrong with the Orioles, handing out comps isn’t one of them.

On the other hand, how much real fun other than a belly laugh that you might not weep was it to notice that Cronenworth reached base six times in the extra innings without once having been in the batter’s box?

Bottom of the eleventh: intentional walk. (Remember: the pitcher doesn’t have to throw four wide ones to do it anymore.) Bottom of the twelfth: he’s the cookie on second. Bottom of the thirteenth: another free pass. Bottom of the fourteenth: he’s the cookie again. Bottom of the fifteenth: another free pass. Bottom of the sixteenth: he’s the cookie yet again.

By the way, Tatis and Pollock became the first players to hit multi-run homers in the fifteenth inning or later since David Ortiz and Mark Teixiera did it in 2015. On the other hand, Pollock’s was the first by a Dodger batter since Hi Myers—in 1919.

Now, on to the further absurdity of crediting one guy for everybody else’s work, also known as the pitching win. You’d better sit down, kids: The Dodgers used ten pitchers in the marathon. Nine of them surrendered no earned runs. The guy who surrendered two runs, one earned, Corey Knebel, got credit for the “win.”

“So has that ever happened?” asked Stark. “A game in which 10 pitchers or more show up on the mound for any team, at least nine of them allow no earned runs and the 10th (the only one to get scored on) vultures the win?” Then, he answered:

Since I’m only a glutton for so much punishment, I merely checked games before September — but did go all the way back to 1901.

And how many other games did I find that fit this description? If you guessed none, you win!

Knebel served the game re-tying meatball Tatis sent over the right field fence in the bottom of the fifteenth and gets the “win” when he should really be giving Pollock half the win for hitting the two-run leadoff blast in the top of the sixteenth.

The other half-win should have gone to Shane Greene, who took his 8.84 ERA into the bottom of the inning and—with Cronenworth taking his third turn as the inning-opening cookie on second—got two swinging strikeouts before a grounder to short finally ended the marathon. Greene did 67 percent of the work in the bottom of the sixteenth . . . and got a “save” for a clean inning in which he had to pitch his way out of an artifically, arbitrarily-created jam. Some save.

If Jacob deGrom earning back-to-back Cy Young Awards despite not being a “winner” wasn’t enough to convince you how fatuous the pitching “win” really is for telling you how well a guy really pitches (Jacob deGrom’s issue wasn’t that he “didn’t know how to win.” It was that he didn’t know how not to be on the New York Mets—Anthony Castrovince), maybe something like that will finally start giving you the a-ha!

Maybe something like Wednesday’s game will start giving you the a-ha! too about the futility and stupidity of letting pitchers continue to hold places in the batting order, if the aforementioned slash line or their historical futility at the plate doesn’t. (I’ve pointed it out before, I’ll say it again: since the final decade of the Dead Ball Era, the pitchers have hit a collective .166.)

Maybe the absurdity of Jake Cronenworth reaching base six times from the eleventh through the sixteenth without once truly checking in at the plate will give more people the a-ha! about Manfred’s beyond-insane free cookie on second to start the extra half innings. I’d suggest it might give Manfred himself the same a-ha! too. But I don’t believe in that many miracles.

No-hit Joe from El Cajon

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Joe Musgrove

Joe Musgrove, about to end the Padres’ 8,205-game no-hitter drought.

Right off, what does Joe Musgrove have in common with Cy Young? You can look it up: they both threw their first no-hitters for their hometown teams. More or less.

Musgrove grew up in El Cajon, California, a twenty-minute drive to San Diego if traffic behaves, rooting for the Padres. As a Padre he wears the uniform number of his favourite Padre growing up, Jake Peavy. Young’s first of three no-hitters was for the Cleveland Spiders; he’d grown up in Canton, Ohio, about an hour’s drive from Cleveland.

Breaking out to start 2021 with a distinct resemblance to a Cy Young Award winner in his first Padres start is nothing compared to what Musgrove did Friday night in Arlington.

He not only broke the Padres’ record-setting stretch of 8,205 regular season games without a single no-hitter on the ledger, but if he hadn’t plunked Joey Gallo in the fourth inning he’d have had a perfect game. If Musgrove has any regret from a night allowing none, he might be thinking he’d like to have that one pitch back.

Because, otherwise, he didn’t walk a batter and nobody reached on an error. He threw 112 pitches (average 12 pitches per inning), he’d retired the first eleven Rangers in order before catching Gallo with his first pitch and two outs, then retired the next sixteen he faced in order.

He struck out ten and benefited from ten ground outs and seven outs in the air including three line outs. Making him responsible directly for 59 percent of the game’s outs and thus more responsible for the outcome than his teammates. This no-no was more the real deal than many prove to be.

It also means that the end of the Padres’ no-hit drought means every Show franchise has had at least one no-hitter on its resume. Who better to nail it than the kid from Grossmont High in El Cajon?

Musgrove had only four full counts all night, each the only such heavy count of its inning, and only the third inning was truly work for him, going 2-2 on each batter before getting them out with a called strikeout (Jose Trevino), a fly out to the back of right center field (Eli White), and a ground out (Leody Taveras) to shortstop playing in short right in a shift.

I’ll resist the temptation to ask why Rangers manager Chris Woodward didn’t entertain a thought about ordering Taveras to think about bunting into that delicious open real estate left prone by the defensive shift. Uh, no, I won’t.

It’s not as though the third inning is a definite sign of something like a no-hitter brewing. And if it was, so what? They give you a gift like that, you say thank you, accept it, and unwrap it. If it was the later innings, so what again? Unwritten rules be damned, you need baserunners, you get them by hook, crook, and anything else you can think of. Especially if the other guys are foolish enough to lead you into overwhelming temptation.

As it happens, the Padres were already the proud possessors of a 3-0 lead in the third inning. They hung two up in the second, courtesy of Wil Myers’s RBI double and Tommy Pham’s sacrifice fly; they posted the third in the third when Manny Machado sent an RBI double to the rear of left center field.

That proved all Musgrove needed to work with. And when the ninth inning came around, Musgrove would have had an immaculate inning if he’d struck out all three Rangers he faced. Sort of. He had to settle for getting pinch-hitter David Dahl to line out to second on 1-1, for getting Taveras to ground out right back to the box on 0-2 with a foul off before the grounder, and for getting Isiah Kiner-Falefa to ground out to shortstop on 0-1.

The Globe Life Hangar audience roared approval. And Chris Young, the former pitcher turned commissioner’s office executive turned Rangers general manager, and coincidentally the last Padre to take a no-no as far as the ninth (in 2006, when Joe Randa hit a one-out bomb over the center field fence), couldn’t help himself, either.

“It was obviously a special night for Padres baseball and San Diego fans . . . just unfortunately at the expense of the Texas Rangers,” said Young answering a telephoned question. “But that’s OK.”

If there’s one thing which remains universally true in baseball, it’s that the home crowd and sometimes even the home brass finds itself appreciative when the other guys’ pitcher threatens to finish a no-hitter, never mind up and doing it.

I’m old enough to remember the Shea Stadium crowd suddenly shifting their loyalty when Hall of Famer Jim Bunning took his perfect game into the seventh on Father’s Day 1964. The Mets suddenly became the enemy in their own brand-new playpen and Bunning became the hero they wanted to see finish what he started. To the point where he got a standing ovation from a packed park when he batted late in the game.

Bunning’s fellow Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax had that experience only once: he pitched his 4 June 1964 no-no against the Phillies in Connie Mack Stadium. He pitched his three other no-nos—against the Original Mets (1962, which some wags said was doing it the too-easy way), the Giants (1963), and the Cubs (practise makes perfect, 1965)—in front of the home audience.

So did Hall of Famer Bob Feller. His first two no-nos: on the road in Chicago and New York. The third: At home. Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan was also a no-hit road rat: of his seven, he pitched four on the road: two as an Angel (against the Royals and the Tigers), and two as a Ranger. (Against the A’s and the Blue Jays.) Cue up the Creedence Clearwater Revival classic “Travelin’ Band.”

Musgrove would have to pitch a second no-hitter against the Rangers on the road to equal one unusual feat: Justin Verlander’s three no-hitters include two against the Jays, both of which were pitched in Toronto. Verlander isn’t the only pitcher to no-hit the same team twice (hello, Addie Joss and Tim Lincecum), but he’s the only one to do it in their sandbox.

“For him to do it growing up in San Diego and this being his team,” said Padres manager Jayce Tingler after Musgrove’s jewel, “it’s about the perfect story written.” Well, it might have been even more so if it happened in the home yard, but the Padres will take what they can get.

They had an inkling Musgrove would prove just the number three man they’d need while they spent much of the off-season overhauling their starting rotation. They dealt for Blake Snell and Yu Darvish so swiftly you almost missed the Darvish deal. A few weeks later, they had Musgrove coming aboard. He rewarded their faith by throwing six shutout innings at the Diamondbacks en route a 7-1 Padres win.

Who knew it was just a warmup for the Big One so far? Musgrove, too, will take it where he can get it. Especially since he’s gone from a World Series champion (with the 2017 Astros, a Series now considered tainted, though the pitchers aren’t exactly to blame for the Astro Intelligence Agency sign-stealing shenanigans) to a Pirate (the Astros traded him in the January 2018 deal that brought them Gerrit Cole) and, now, back home to San Diego.

“I think a no-hitter, regardless of where you’re playing, is really special,” he said after the game. “But it almost seems like this was meant to be . . . The city of San Diego has shown me so much love, even before I came to the Padres, just a San Diego kid who made it to the big leagues. So it feels even better to be able to do it in a Padres uniform and selfishly be able to do it for my city and have everyone know that the kid from Grossmont High threw the first no-hitter.”

The Padres won’t be home again until 16 April, when they host the Dodgers and the Pirates in succession. Bet on it. When Musgrove takes the mound during that homestand, the racket of love will be one of the noisiest rackets in San Diego baseball history. The man from nearby El Cajon will drink every drop appreciatively.