Ryan Bergert is tabbed as the Padres probable starter for tonight’s matchup against the Giants. San Diego will recall the 25-year-old righty from Triple-A El Paso today. Bergert will go opposite Landen Roupp in his first major league start.
Bergert has been up once before. He was promoted in late April and tossed four scoreless innings in four lower-leverage situations. He’ll take on a more significant role this time around. As Kevin Acee of The San Diego Union-Tribune writes, Bergert seems positioned to get a look as the fifth starter. Michael King has been out for a couple weeks with a shoulder issue. The Padres recalled Kyle Hart to take the first start in what would have been King’s spot. Hart gave up five runs through 4 2/3 innings against Miami and was promptly optioned back to Triple-A.
Dylan Cease, Nick Pivetta, Stephen Kolek and Randy Vásquez occupy the top four rotation spots. The Padres are four days into a stretch of 14 consecutive game days. They’re off next Thursday but will again play 14 straight after that. That doesn’t allow them to comfortably work around the fifth rotation spot with bullpen days. Hart and Matt Waldron have each been optioned within the past couple days. They can’t be recalled for a couple weeks barring an injury. The Padres wouldn’t have sent them down if they were planning on either being their short-term fifth starter regardless.
King has an uncertain return timeline. The Padres said last week that he’s dealing with a pinched nerve. They’ve stressed that there’s nothing structurally wrong but indicated they don’t know how quickly the nerve irritation will subside. Yu Darvish has been out all season with elbow inflammation. He was pulled off a rehab assignment after experiencing soreness last month. According to the MLB.com injury tracker, he has been throwing side sessions but he’ll presumably need at least one or two rehab starts once he’s ready to resume game action.
Bergert, a sixth-round pick out of West Virginia in 2021, ranked as San Diego’s #21 prospect at Baseball America over the winter. BA credited him with three average to slightly above-average pitches and decent control. He’s working mostly behind a 94 MPH fastball and mid-80s slider in Triple-A. He may need to lean a little more heavily on his changeup to handle left-handed hitters at the MLB level.
The approach has worked well enough for him in El Paso. Bergert has posted a 3.75 ERA with a 24% strikeout rate over nine starts. He’s unlikely to work through a lineup three times very often, however. Bergert hasn’t topped five innings in any start this year. He’s mostly pitching 3-4 inning stints. Bergert tossed four scoreless with four strikeouts during his most recent appearance last Wednesday.
Padres are really picking that Bergert. Digging for nose gold.
Now this is the sweet juice I’ve been foaming at the mouth waiting for… Bergert or “BlueChew Elmo” as we called him in highschool is really what the Pads need right now. His ERA in the AZ fall league was borderline dominance… let me just put it in a language we can all understand: there’s a reason we always would dump soup into his sneakers during gym class…
Tough gig, being a Padre pitcher. The way the offense has gone he’ll likely need to throw a shutout to win
Time to see what this guys got. Last year he seemed to get off track but 2025 his PCL numbers look awesome and although very small sample, good at mlb.
I’d like to see him, Hart, Kolek and Waldron and Vasquez battling for 5th spot in 2026 – a lot better depth than recent years of 5-10 guys.
I’m counting on King, Pivetta, Yu (20 starts anyway) and Joe (likely 20 ish starts as well) as 1-4 with some filling in for rest periods.
Among pitchers that have started games in their team’s 5th slot this season (not openers), the Padres starters, Kolek (3.00 ERA in 7 starts), Hart (6.66 ERA in 6 starts), and Bergert (1.74 ERA in 2 appearances as a starter), at 4.04 have the lowest ERA in MLB from the 5th slot.
I would like someone to wake Tatis up. The offense hasn’t been very clutch lately, hopefully they can get it going like in the beginning of the year.
Yep. He is in a funk but so are others. Cro,JM, X, Luis and even Manny (not as much) have had offensive numbers drop over past 3 weeks.
I think a Tatis surge could be the thing to spark the lineup though.
it’s officially Tati’s worst career hitting slump. Weird, because it’s the year he’s actually been near fully healthy. I’d be delighted if they win 11 or 12 of their next 25 games.
Just so long as those wins are against the right teams to keep the standings even. Taking 4 from LA and one of next 2 from SF. Then hope LA has similar result from also a pretty tough June.
If SD ends June within 2-3 games and has gotten King and Yu and Hoeing back, the hitting surely will come around.
Hope so LT
Since he was HBP on the forearm on May 3rd, Tatis is hitting .189 with a .254 OBP and .600 OPS. If he continues to hit like that and is not dropped from the leadoff spot, I would be happy to see the Padres win 2 or 3 of their next 10 games. 7 are against the Dodgers and they are going to score runs.
I firmly believe that Tatis is playing through an injury to the detriment of the team. I also believe that Shildt has kept him in the leadoff position to the detriment of the team. Bogaerts has been terrible and his .315 OBP over that same period would have led to approximately 4.5 more runs and 1 more win based on run probability even if all the additional times he was a baserunner were singles or walks.
He did. Bergert pitched 5.1 innings of one hit, scoreless ball for the Padres.
Waldron is coming off the 60 day DL (oblique) and was never assigned to, or on, the active roster this year. He was strictly being assigned to somewhere, so he would be available for a call up at any point in time if they think he is ready.
If King and Yu are not back, I’d bet Waldron will cycle into the mix over the next 2-3 weeks.
@Das when he completed his rehab he was removed from the 60 day IL and he either had to be put on the MLB roster or optioned. The MLB official transaction log shows him as optioned on 6/1 which makes him eligible for recall 15 days after that.
He had a 5.25ERA over 4 rehab starts so they probably think he needs to perform a little better before they promote him
Waldron was activated and optioned to El Paso on June 1st.
PCL ERA is deceiving, as is looking at the performance of players on a rehab assignment.
In one rehab start of Waldron’s for San Antonio, he threw more than 70% fastballs. Still only gave up 2 ER to the Wichita Wind Surge. He will never do that in an MLB game. In his 2 PCL starts he never gave up more than 3 ER even though in his game in Sacramento 50 of his 75 pitches were either his sinker or 4 seam fastball. In his last outing after being optioned, he threw his regular repertoire. About 40% knuckle balls and the rest split between his 2 FB a cutter and a sweeper. He pitched 5 innings or 2 run ball with 5 K in that game. I am guessing he was throwing more FB in the rehab games because that is a greater test of the oblique injury he suffered.
On Saturday Hoeing threw nothing but sliders to the first 5 batters he faced for El Paso. Then he mixed in his sinker to the next 3 and struck out two and got the other to groundout softly.