Padres drop opener to Tigers as Randy Vasquez struggles

Kevin Acee, The San Diego Union-Tribune on Apr 21, 2025

Published in Baseball

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DETROIT — The short-handed San Diego Padres weren’t given much of a chance to win or lose Monday night.

They lost.

And who knows what they might have been able to do had Luis Arraez and/or Jake Cronenworth and/or Jackson Merrill been in the lineup rather than on the injured list?

But a 6-4 defeat at the hands of the Detroit Tigers was not so much about who the Padres were not able to send to the plate so much as who they had on the mound and how he was pitching.

Randy Vasquez picked a bad time to revert to being the “traffic cop,” as his manager once referred to him for his penchant for allowing baserunners.

Vasquez’s excellent start to 2025 hit a skid on Monday, as he allowed the same number of runs as outs he recorded and threw almost as many balls as he did strikes.

A night that began with him owning a 1.74 ERA ended with him looking for the first time this season like the guy who had no idea where his pretty good pitches were going and the guy who had a 4.87 ERA a year ago.

Vasquez was throwing an average of hardly more than 15 pitches an inning, fewer than all but a couple dozen starting pitchers in the major leagues. He needed almost twice that many to get through Monday’s first inning and threw 68 of them to the 15 batters he lasted long enough to face.

Vasquez had retired the first batter in all but four of the 21 innings he had begun this season. He did not do that in any of the three innings he began on Monday.

Vasquez had allowed two runs in an inning once and a total of five runs in his first four starts. He was charged with two runs in three different innings Monday, and he technically pitched just two innings.

That is how the Padres lost the opener of a three-game series at Comerica Park.

Now, the Padres did run into an out that ended their two-run fifth inning. And they did have a chance to give Vasquez more support early.

They loaded the bases with one out in the first inning and scored once. They had runners at first and second with no outs in the second inning and scored once.

The Tigers scored twice in both innings off Vasquez and then twice more in the third off Vasquez and Logan Gillaspie.

The Padres took a 1-0 lead on a lead-off single by Fernando Tatis Jr., a one-out walk by Manny Machado and Tirso Ornelas’ fielder’s choice grounder in the top of the first.

They trailed 2-1 by the end of the inning when a triple and two singles contributed to Vasquez throwing 30 pitches.

The Padres tied the game in the top of the second without getting a hit. Jose Iglesias was hit by a pitch at the start, Tyler Wade drew a one-out walk, both advanced on a passed ball and Iglesias ran home on a groundout by Tatis.

The Tigers also had a batter hit and advanced on a passed ball in the bottom of the second. And they got two more hits against Vasquez, who was at 57 pitches by the time the inning was over.

His day was finished when he walked the first two batters he faced in the third inning.

Gillaspie, in the bullpen ostensibly only for situations in which a starting pitcher can’t get out, was called on for the first time in 15 days.

He got two quick outs before walking No. 9 batter Tomás Nido and surrendering a two-run single to Gleyber Torres.

Gavin Sheets’ one-out home run, a Machado single, a walk by Xander Bogaerts and two-out single by Oscar Gonzalez got the Padres to 6-4. But Gonzalez was thrown out trying to advance to second when the throw from the outfield got past shortstop Trey Sweeney.

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