About Last Night: A's @ Padres

Debuts, milestones, and a lights-out performance

The starting pitchers couldn’t keep the secret. Last night’s series opener at Petco Park between the A’s and the Padres revealed each team’s aspirations.

The home team sent Dylan Cease to the mound. Cease, the AL Cy Young runner-up in 2022, was acquired from the White Sox on March 13 in exchange for a bundle of prospects. Seven years prior, Cease himself was a prospect — bundled with Eloy Jimenez and others — and traded by the Cubs to their crosstown rivals for Jose Quintana. It’s a strange price to pay for being good at your job.

The A’s countered with rookie Joey Estes, who was part of the return from Atlanta in 2022 for All-Star and two-time Gold Glove first baseman Matt Olson. Estes was making his eighth career start.

One team enlists a win-now player, while the other turns to a placeholder whom Oakland will try to develop into a back-of-the-rotation starter.

The last time I chronicled a game in real time, I was guzzling expertly roasted, single-source coffee at four in the morning. You may remember that the Dodgers and Padres split their two season-opening games in Seoul. Since then, the Padres have gone 33-34. They’re consistently inconsistent.

In a National League that offers more playoff spots than teams presently worthy of October, the Padres middling play is far from fatal. This series, however — three weekday games against a team pieced together with prospects, suspects, revenue sharing money, and some slot machine vouchers from Binion's — is an opportunity for the Pads to sweep.

For this game, I’ve traded in my couch for a perch high above the playing field at Petco Park. And it’s a much more reasonable hour for baseball. Coffee is available, but it’s not the Bridge City brew that my friend Ryan Woldt supplied me with back in March.

Early in the game, Cease is up with his fastball. He’s also a little too inside with it, hitting A’s leadoff hitter Abraham Toro. So much of baseball is making adjustments. Cease does, and he strikes out the side.

The second inning gets loud. First baseman Tyler Soderstrom leads off with a home run, and catcher Shea Langeliers, who came over from the Braves with Estes in the Olson trade, rockets a first-pitch fastball into center field for a single. Daz Cameron flies out to center, but he hit the ball hard. After retiring Zack Gelof, nine-hitter Max Schuemann smokes a full-count fastball into left field. Four hard hit balls, all off Cease’s fastball, which was sitting around 94-95 MPH. It was also venturing into the middle of the plate. Toro flies out harmlessly, though, and the rally is thwarted.

Seeing Daz Cameron step into the batter’s box is a journey back in time. His father, Mike, was an integral part of the 2006 and 2007 Padres. The way the A’s season could unfold, they may have a spot on the roster for the 51-year-old by September.

Leading off the bottom of the second, Manny Machado, back in the starting lineup for the first time since straining his right hip flexor last Wednesday in Anaheim, hits a soft fly ball into center field. After watching thousands of baseball games, your eye tells you when a batted ball should be caught. Machado, clearly not 100% and serving as the designated hitter on this night, seemed resigned to slowly jog towards first base before turning right, heading back to the dugout. I couldn’t tell if center fielder JJ Bleday misread the ball or if he was playing too deep. Regardless, the ball lands safely, and the center fielder takes a chunk of the turf with him on an awkward dive. It’s a line drive in the box score!

Backup third baseman and official journeyman Donovan Solano strikes out before Jackson Merrill chops one through the right side. The Padres have something cooking for Ha-Seong Kim. He walks. Bases loaded for catcher Luis Campusano, who gently lofts a ball just beyond the infield dirt. The infield fly is called. Arraez follows with an outfield fly. The side is retired.

The A’s still lead, 1-0, in the bottom of the third before a center-cut fastball to Jake Cronenworth ends up deep into the seats in right-center field. What has jumped out at me most about Estes is that his fastball, especially for a righty, is slow. While he will muscle up to 93, he works around 90-91. In previous outings, he’s averaged around 93 MPH. On this night, it’s not quite there.

The Padres hit four balls very hard in the fourth inning. It’s rough going for the rookie pitcher, but he’s escapes allowing only one run thanks to an out on the bases and a line drive right at his first baseman.

The A’s are developing a pitcher. Estes is not a finished product. He’s 22 years old. There are pitchers in Omaha competing in the College World Series older than him. Plus, he’s not pitching in New York or Los Angeles. There’s no reason to remove him before he has a chance to complete the fifth inning and work through the heart of the San Diego lineup a third time. For A’s fans and baseball fans in general, Estes’ next inning of work is exciting. You can’t simulate facing a big league lineup on the road, 70 pitches into your outing and with a fading fastball in any gym, lab, or minor league ballpark. There’s no activity in the Oakland bullpen. We’re going to learn a little more about the first big leaguer ever produced by Paraclete High School in Lancaster, Calif.

He opens the bottom of the fifth with a sweeper that registers at 78 MPH. Modern baseball vernacular, with signficant influence from MLB, dictates that we recognize the pitch as such. Certain sliders now identify as sweepers.

A couple pitches later, as I was contemplating the impact of pitching gurus on the history of today’s game, Fernando Tatis Jr homers to the opposite field. The pitch was actually a little off the plate. The trouble with throwing 91-93 in today’s game, however, is that low-90s velocity, especially without much movement, is essentially a batting practice fastball. Estes also, I’m realizing, hasn’t intentionally crowded any hitters. The at-bats against him seem comfortable.

Cronenworth rockets an 0-2 slider into right field for a double. Machado fouls off a few pitches before swinging at a fastball that missed the catcher’s target by two feet. He awkwardly strikes out on the 10th pitch of the at-bat. He probably guessed wrong and overcommitted.

Estes is one out away from the end of his night. One out from acquitting himself. He records that final out on a hard-hit grounder to the second baseman. Estes wasn’t great, but he threw strikes and — according to my observations — got lucky. The evening could have gone a lot worse for him. He allowed single runs in the third, fourth, and fifth innings; he never retired the side in order. But he pitched well enough to deserve the ball again in five days. This weekend, he should face the Twins in Minnesota.

In the bottom of the seventh, A’s reliever Sean Newcomb creates a bit of a mess. After striking out Tatis to begin the inning, he walks Jurickson Profar, hits Cronenworth, and surrenders a hard single to Machado. A’s left fielder Miguel Andujar — yes, the same Miguel Andujar who was Rookie of the Year runner-up with the Yankees — has too strong of an arm to send Profar. Andujar already nailed Kim at second. Padres third base coach Tim Leiper is wise to hold the runner.

Newcomb’s night is over. Out of the bullpen comes Michel Otañez, orginally signed several years ago by the Mets out of the Dominican Republic. Otañez has walked more than six batters per nine innings in his minor league career. There are control problems, and then there’s walking-six-per-nine problems. But the 2024 A’s have essentially been designated for assignment. This team issues walks so Las Vegas can run.

Otañez toes the rubber and becomes the 116th player to debut this season. Unsurprisingly, Oakland leads the league with nine first-timers.

He throws a four-seam fastball, a two-seamer, a slider, and his glove is a bold and bright teal. It’s hard to miss.

Good thing, too; three pitches into the inning, the lights go out in the ballpark. The three-minute delay energizes an erstwhile tame crowd, and it also ices a rookie who had a Solano down in the count, 1-2.

Otañez inherited a bases loaded mess. It’s probably not the way the A’s coaching staff envisioned the debut of a pitcher with control problems. His full count offering to Solano hums by the catcher at 100 MPH before meeting the backstop. Maybe someone can turn off the lights again.

Watching the pitcher work, I realize that I recognize the unconventional shade of his glove. It’s from the color palette used by L.O.L. Surprise toys, a bizarre line of big-headed dolls fueled by fashion, elevated by social media, and sold at Target. I suppose it’s what Barbie would be if millennial influencers called the shots at Mattel.

I’m sorry I just subjected you to that paragraph. I apologize. Otañez’s glove is a funny color. I wonder if there’s a correlation between fastball command and the brightness of a pitcher’s glove.

Even when he does throw strikes, it doesn’t fool the Padres. Otañez allows all three inherited runners to score, records two outs, and exits the game with an ERA of 0.00. To quote Sarah Langs, baseball is the best.

T.J. McFarland has been in the league for 12 seasons. He’s pitched for the Orioles, the Diamondbacks, the A’s, the Cardinals, and the Mets. Now, at 35 years old, he’s back with the A’s, throwing a pitch that wasn’t even in baseball lexicon when he broke in.

McFarland was drafted by Cleveland in 2007, when his teammate who started the game was five. He retires the Padres in order in the bottom of the eighth. With that third out, McFarland now has thrown exactly 500 innings in the big leagues (thanks to Greg Korn with the A's media relations team for that nugget).

The Padres win, 6-1, and arrive at .500 again. The A’s fall to 26-42, a pace that will get them to 100 losses. Here’s the problem, though: The A’s were 17-17 in early May. Since then, they’ve gone 9-25. Those last 34 games seem more representative of the team on the field. I hear Don't Come is still a popular bet in Vegas.

I'll say this, though: I hope that Oakland manager Mark Kotsay receives at least one vote for AL Manager of the Year. The award typically goes to the manager of one of the league’s top teams. I’d like to consider a talent-optimization quotient; Kotsay’s crew is outclassed on most nights. But they can still compete.

There’s a chance, though, that the A’s have already won more games than they’re going to throughout the remainder of the season. Almost 60% of the schedule has yet to be played. If this team loses only 101 games as opposed to 112, Kotsay has earned honorable mention in my book.

Tonight, I’ll be flipping between the A’s/Padres and White Sox/Mariners. Drew Thorpe, who went to San Diego when the Yankees acquired Juan Soto, only to be flipped to the White Sox in the Cease trade, will make his Major League debut tonight in Seattle. Every game counts.

I’ll be back on again on Thursday!

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