PETCO PARK (San Diego, Calif.) – Just hours before Tuesday’s do-or-die NLDS Game 3, word started to trickle down to many of the Padres players that they’d be without their two best high-leverage relievers. Mason Miller was placed on paternity leave. Adrian Morejon’s shoulder felt fatigued.
Earlier in the day, Padres starter Michael King stopped by his manager’s office. King, who had thrown 72 pitches just two days prior as the Game 2 starter in the National League Division Series, told Stammen he was ready to pitch in Games 3, 4 and 5, should they need him with the season on the line. "I know that I have bullets in my arm that I don’t want to save," King said.
"I felt like it needed to be the right time." With Miller gone and Morejon aching, and the rest of the Padres’ high-leverage relievers already deployed, that time arrived in the eighth inning Tuesday night. And it continued on into the ninth, as King’s 40 pitches over two scoreless innings of relief preserved the save in a 4-3 win to force a Game 4 against the Brewers. "It seemed like he put himself out there," said Padres reliever Jason Adam.
"He didn’t just go out there begrudgingly to cover. He said, ‘I want the ball.’" Somehow, King’s stuff still looked good. His four-seamer was up 1.6 mph from his season average.
His two-seamer was up more than 2 mph. This was not a foreign concept to King, who was a star reliever with the Yankees. But that was three years ago, before he had transitioned to starting and transformed into San Diego’s ace.
King made one regular-season relief appearance when he joined the Padres in 2024. He made another in last year’s postseason, striking out three in a scoreless inning against the Cubs. This one, however, was especially astonishing, given the circumstances.
Many Padres players heard King might be part of the bullpen mix entering the night, but most weren’t sure what the role or the lane would be. King told the team right after he exited his Game 2 start that he would be ready to pitch in Game 3. Third baseman Manny Machado tried to talk him down.
"I kinda told him, like, ‘Why? Get ready for Game 5,’" Machado said. "But, he wanted the ball, man." Shortstop Xander Bogaerts, meanwhile, was completely taken aback as the innings unfolded Tuesday night.
He said he didn’t even know Miller and Morejon were both unavailable until he saw King entering the game. "I saw him warming up in one of the innings, and I was like, ‘That’s a little weird,’" Bogaerts told me. "For him not to throw one [inning], but to throw two, that’s the player of the game." The Padres had already used their best available bullpen weapons — Adam, Bradgley Rodriguez and Yuki Matsui — to extinguish fires earlier in the night as the Brewers staged their nightly comeback attempt.
The Padres have scored first in every game this series, and each time the Brewers have clawed back. Tuesday was no exception. This time, though, San Diego had a different remedy for the final frames.
They had, as Stammen described him, a "safety net" in King, who prepared for this possibility by doing more recovery work on Monday. He also didn’t throw his typical between-start bullpen session. "This was it," said Padres pitching coach Ruben Niebla.
Then, on Tuesday, King tried to tap back into his bullpen mentality: "Just trying to make sure I had as much adrenaline as I possibly could." He needed 19 pitches to get through the eighth. Bogaerts and Machado figured that would be it for him. The Padres were working through what to do for the ninth.
But no one was warming. "I thought he was just going to be good for one, kind of like a bullpen day," Machado said. "Yeah, surprised he went out there for a second.
S––, screw it, let’s go. Let’s do it." "As soon as he came out," Adam said, "I was like, ‘This is his game.’" Leading by a run, King struck out Jake Bauers in the ninth before William Contreras worked a nine-pitch walk. Then, King issued another free pass to Brice Turang.
As things began to get dicey, Joe Musgrove and Robbie Ray started getting warm. They wouldn’t be needed. "We were waiting to see how the game was developing at that point," Niebla told me.
"But when you have Michael King out there and what he’s capable of doing, and he is your best arm, we felt pretty good about it." King then threw a first-pitch slider to Christian Yelich, who laced it up the middle 107.1 mph off the bat. At shortstop, Bogaerts dropped to his knees to field it, gathered himself, stepped on second base for the force and threw on to first to complete the double play. It wasn’t the typical shutdown ninth inning the Padres had grown accustomed to this year, but it might have been the most impressive.
"Nobody buys the boring books," Adam said. "A little adversity’s good for the boys." As of Tuesday night, Niebla said the team is expecting both Miller and Morejon to be back for Game 4. That, of course, is dependent on how everything goes with the birth of Miller’s first-born child and the response of Morejon’s shoulder.
Miller contacted the Padres to let them know early in the afternoon about his circumstances. The San Diego coaching staff didn’t need to huddle afterward. According to Niebla, they already had contingency plans mapped out.
Miller’s teammates all supported his decision. "We kind of knew the situation coming into it," Machado told me. "If it was going to get to this, he was going to be there for the first-born." "It’s a hard thing to balance," first baseman Ty France added, "but he’s doing the right thing." Morejon, meanwhile, threw off a mound Tuesday, but the Padres figured he wasn’t going to be available based on how he was feeling.
The star left-handed reliever had reported some issues with his shoulder a day after throwing two innings in Game 1 of the series. Niebla called it "a little fatigue." Stammen described it as "a little stickiness in the shoulder." "If anything changed, that would have been good news," Stammen said. "But, nothing changed.
So, we knew we were going to have to rely on our whole pitching staff this postseason, and this was the first day of that." If they need King again in relief, the "safety net" claims he's ready. "Michael is willing to do anything for the team," Stammen said. "It's pretty awesome to have someone like that, star player, be able to articulate that to me, the manager, and the coaching staff, and then go out and do it."
