The Padres’ season ended with a familiar problem hanging over everything: the starting rotation wasn’t good enough when the games got biggest.
San Diego didn’t lose Game 4 of the National League Division Series to Milwaukee because of one bad pitching plan alone. The Padres managed just three hits, and Garrett Mitchell’s eighth-inning robbery in center field was the kind of swing that can tilt an elimination game on its own. But the gap between the two rotations kept showing up in the background, and it mattered.
The Padres led only 2-1 when they turned to the bullpen in the fifth inning. Bradgley Rodriguez, Yuki Matsui, Jason Adam and Mason Miller handled the relief work on this day, and Joe Musgrove later came in during the eighth to clean up the loss. Milwaukee, meanwhile, had a much deeper and more flexible plan ready to go.
Pat Murphy didn’t need to empty the tank. Jacob Misiorowski, the hardest-throwing starting pitcher of the Statcast era - if not ever - was still sitting there for a possible Game 5 on Friday in Milwaukee after not throwing a pitch since Game 1 on Saturday. In the meantime, Murphy pieced together seven innings with former Padres prospect Robert Gasser and middle reliever extraordinaire Aaron Ashby, then handed the late innings to Abner Uribe and Trevor Megill for one inning apiece.
That kind of rotation and bullpen structure is the difference between surviving one round and chasing four. The Padres don’t have that yet.
If San Diego wants to take the next step, the answer is clear: it needs more starting pitchers who can give length, and ideally one or two who can slide into the bullpen in a best-of-three or best-of-five series. With all due respect to Walker Buehler and Robbie Ray, it’s not a great sign that Stammen got only 15 of the Padres’ 34.2 innings from starters in the series, not counting the innings Ray and Michael King worked as relievers.
So what comes next? The Padres’ offseason is going to revolve around reshaping the rotation, and the current picture is messy.
Here’s where their 2026 starters stand:
- Michael King has a $28 million player option for next season, and he’s expected to decline it.
- Nick Pivetta has a $14 million club option for 2027 that the Padres will likely exercise.
- Lucas Giolito and Griffin Canning both have mutual options for 2027, and both are likely to be declined.
- Robbie Ray, Walker Buehler and Casey Mize are free agents.
That leaves San Diego with a tough set of choices. Buehler made a case in 2026 as a mid-rotation innings eater, and there’s a path to him coming back. Even if he isn’t the guy the Padres want starting a 2027 postseason game, he could still be valuable in getting them there.
Mize and Ray are a different kind of question. Both are likely to seek salaries that match the front-line starters they were before arriving in San Diego via trades in free agency. The issue is that the Padres need more regular contributions from pitchers under 30, and that has not been their reality.
King is the hardest piece to replace. If he leaves, the rotation would be Pivetta, Musgrove, Vasquez and Sears without him. Even with him, the group still wouldn’t be enough.
Bringing Buehler back would help, and Giolito could be part of the answer too. Another route would be to trade for multiple starters who are nearing free agency, have upside and may not fit their current teams’ long-term plans. Names such as Nick Lodolo, Peter Lambert and Josiah Gray fit that type of search, though a move like that could force the Padres to part with Pivetta and/or a catcher like Freddy Fermin or Luis Campusano.
The biggest name on the market will be Tarik Skubal. The Los Angeles Dodgers’ two-time Cy Young Award winner is expected to command a deal worth $300 million or more, and he would give his next team the kind of ace the Padres need to keep pace with the Brewers and Dodgers in the National League.
A deal that big may take a while to materialize because of the looming lockout. It could be months before Skubal’s landing spot is known. The Padres could theoretically try to get it done before the Collective Bargaining Agreement expires Dec. 1, but that’s a long shot.
However they go about it, the Padres have to open next season with a rotation that inspires more confidence than the one that ran into Milwaukee. It may be the first major test of their new owners’ financial muscle.
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