Michael King’s sixth inning on Monday night came with a little more drama than a routine outing usually allows, but it also brought him something he’d been asking Craig Stammen for all season.
The San Diego Padres starter turned in a career-high 15th quality start in the 5-0 win over the Cincinnati Reds, topping the mark he set in 2024. The box score says six scoreless innings. The path to get there was much messier.
King’s night started with immediate trouble. In his first three batters, he allowed a single and a double, suddenly putting two Reds in scoring position with one out. He worked out of it by getting a groundout and a strikeout to escape the inning.
The second inning brought more of the same. King hit Eugenio Suarez with the first pitch of the frame, then gave up a single to the next batter. Again, he steadied himself and retired the next three hitters to keep Cincinnati off the board.
By the end of the night, King had allowed four hits, issued three walks and hit two batters. It wasn’t clean.
It wasn’t pretty. But it was scoreless, and that mattered most.
The biggest moment came in the sixth, after King hit his second batter of the game. Stammen came out to the mound, and for the first time in his first season managing the Padres, he left King in the game.
“I think when the manager goes out there and leaves the starter out there, I think it gives confidence to the starter,” King said of Stammen's move. “And I’ve always wanted that.
My college coach did it to me a couple times, and so I told Stammen that, and he was like, ‘I don’t want to do that. I’m not comfortable with that.’
And I said, ‘Please.’ It took three-quarters of the way through the year to do it, but very, very happy he gave me that out.”
King said he made his case quickly and didn’t leave much room for discussion.
“I didn’t even let him talk,” King said. “I just said, ‘This is a quick out, four-seam down and away.
I got this one.’ And he said, ‘All right, let’s do it.’
And that was it.”
King followed through, getting TJ Friedl to line out to right field on a hard-hit ball that Fernando Tatis Jr. caught.
“It was just a lot louder of a quick out than I wanted,” King said. “So I snapped my head back [toward] the dugout to make eye contact with him.
He was laughing. But glad that we can laugh at it because it was an out.”
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