Michael King gave the Padres score they needed and then some: seven scoreless innings in a 1-0 win over the Braves on Monday. He ended a five-start slump and picked up his first win in more than a month while the Padres kept a tight grip on the wild-card race.
King struck out five, scattered six hits and did not issue a walk. After the game, he said, "Still a lot of work to do, but I was tired of getting beat up out there."
Manny Machado Opens the Scoring
Manny Machado supplied the only run with a home run to start the fourth inning, his second in three days. The Padres managed only four hits, so one swing was enough to decide the game in front of a sellout crowd of 42,572 at Petco Park.
That slim margin put the rest of the night on the bullpen, and Adrián Morejón and Mason Miller finished it cleanly. Morejón struck out two of the three batters he faced, then Miller got a strikeout with runners on first and second to secure the win.
King Finds a Cleaner Delivery
King said he had moved away from a mechanical feel and toward simply competing, and that he had gotten away from that in his last four or five starts. He also said, "I know the mechanics will get there, but I always felt like one of my strengths is being able to figure it out almost on the fly and working with what I got, and I got away from that last four or five starts."
He had already shown that ceiling once this season, when he struck out nine Dodgers over seven shutout innings in a 1-0 win on May 18. This time, the same kind of run prevention came at a time when the Padres' rotation had begun the week ranked 25th in ERA at 4.63.
Padres Rotation Under Pressure
Craig Stammen said the Padres had been looking for King to stop their stretch of poorer play, and he did that by taking the ball deep enough to save the bullpen for the final two innings. Stammen also said, "That’s what we’ve come accustomed to with him, and his little funk coincided with our team’s funk. So I think going forward we feel really good about Michael every time he goes out there."
For the Padres, the immediate gain is more than one clean result. Randy Vásquez had a 6.91 ERA over his last six starts, and the club has used openers for Griffin Canning and Lucas Giolito, so King’s seven-inning answer gave the staff a needed lower-stress night.
