The Padres don’t need to apologize for enjoying a small break before their final regular-season showdown with Arizona.
Lourdes Gurriel Jr. is gone now, officially released by the Diamondbacks, which means he won’t be in the lineup when the two clubs wrap up the season with three games at Petco Park. For San Diego, sitting tied with the Cubs and Phillies at 85-69 across the three National League Wild Card spots entering Saturday, that matters. Maybe not as a headline-grabber, but enough to notice.
That’s especially true for Padres fans who still remember what Gurriel did to them last year. On Aug. 5, 2025, he turned around a 103.9 mph fastball from Mason Miller and sent it 439 feet to left-center for a game-tying, two-run homer in the eighth inning.
No pitch that fast had ever been hit for a home run during the pitch-tracking era. It was Gurriel’s second homer of the night, and the kind of swing that sticks in the memory.
The Padres still won that game 10-5 in 11 innings, and Miller got the last word the next night by striking out Gurriel with a slider while earning his first save with San Diego. So even after Gurriel did real damage, the series ended with the Padres on top. Still, that blast off Miller is the image that lingers.
What makes the release more useful for San Diego is that Gurriel had long been one of those hitters who seemed especially comfortable facing the Padres. In 41 games against them, he hit .307/.329/.536 with eight home runs and 28 RBI.
This year, though, the production wasn’t there. He posted a .622 OPS in six games against San Diego, a drop that fit the broader story of his season.
Arizona had its own clear reason to move on. Gurriel came back from ACL surgery and hit just .210/.254/.290 with two home runs in 201 plate appearances.
A hamstring strain and an adductor injury made an already difficult return even harder. With a $5 million option buyout looming, the Diamondbacks decided the roster spot was more valuable than waiting for his bat to wake up.
For the Padres, any edge helps. They entered Saturday five games ahead of Arizona with eight to play, while the Diamondbacks’ Wild Card elimination number sat at four. San Diego had also won nine of its previous 10, turning what had looked like a scramble for the last playoff spot into a three-team race for Wild Card positioning.
Even so, there’s no room to breathe yet. The Padres still have two games left against Miami, then a three-game trip to Dodger Stadium, and only after that comes the Arizona series.
There’s already plenty of risk in that stretch. The only real goal now is to keep winning enough that the finale against the Diamondbacks doesn’t decide anything at all.
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The early returns have already given Padres fans plenty to track beyond the usual rookie growing pains. Salas has put up a triple and two home runs in his first MLB games, and he became the youngest catcher in MLB history to post a multi-home run game. Even with the offensive spark, he has kept the focus on the bigger picture, stressing team-first baseball and steady defense as he works through the kind of adjustment that often defines a young players first stretch in the majors. [Read more 🡒]