Craig Stammen didn’t win the argument with A.J. Preller in that Miami hotel room, but he may have helped save the Padres’ season anyway.
That late-July meeting came with San Diego sitting at 50-53 and staring at a rotation that had basically turned into a daily scramble. Joe Musgrove and Nick Pivetta were hurt.
Griffin Canning and Germán Márquez were getting hit hard. Randy Vásquez had slipped after a strong start to the 2026 season.
Walker Buehler had been solved. And there was only so much Michael King could do.
According to Kevin Acee in The San Diego Union-Tribune, Preller wanted the Padres to stop pretending they had a normal starting rotation. Under his plan, only King and Buehler would keep working as traditional starters.
Mason Miller and Adrian Morejón would stay protected at the back of the bullpen. Everyone else would be used in more targeted ways, with matchups driving when and how they were deployed.
No one would be promised five-inning outings, and no one would even be guaranteed a third time through the order.
Stammen pushed back. He had every reason to.
The idea touched everything - preparation, recovery, health, and the pride of pitchers who still saw themselves as starters. It was the kind of move that can easily spiral if a manager just nods along and avoids the uncomfortable part.
That’s not collaboration. That’s surrender.
But once Stammen said his piece, he didn’t cling to the old model. He moved into the new one.
Instead of treating the compromise like a defeat, Stammen owned it. He talked in terms of “we” and “us,” laid out why the approach could work, and got everyone to buy in.
That matters, because it suggests he’s more than just Preller’s voice in the clubhouse. He took a plan he didn’t fully endorse and made it the team’s plan.
The pitchers followed, even if some of them had doubts about whether the whole thing could really hold up. Former starters took on shorter outings.
The staff built game plans around which hitters each arm was best suited to face. Stammen went into games with a clear blueprint instead of waiting for trouble and trying to improvise his way out of it.
The results showed up fast. The Padres won eight of their next nine, and five of those games used the patchwork pitching approach.
That run was enough to get San Diego to the trade deadline with real momentum, which gave Preller the opening to buy instead of tear things down. The club then added Casey Mize and Robbie Ray, turning a stopgap solution into a bridge toward something closer to a real rotation.
Preller still deserves his share of the blame, because he helped create the mess by building a rotation without enough cushion for injuries or poor performance. But Stammen gets credit too. He resisted the idea, accepted it, and then made it work.
That kind of manager can be invaluable when the noise gets louder and every decision gets magnified. Stammen has already shown he can make those calls. More important, he’s shown he can explain them without throwing a player under the bus or turning the front office into the enemy.
In Other News...
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Diamondbacks Face A Season-Defining Pitching Test In San Diego
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Arizonas path is simple but demanding: take two of three from a Padres team that has little reason to relax, and get help from the Phillies falling two of three against the Rays. With the pitching matchups set and San Diegos seeding possibilities still in play, the series has the feel of one of those late-season sets where every inning seems to matter twice as much. [Read more 🡒]