One thing we know beyond the shadow of a doubt (and barring injury) is Yu Darvish, Joe Musgrove, and Michael King ... in some order ... will occupy the first three places in the Padres starting rotation. After that there's a big old competition going on for the final two spots.
Randy Vasquez might have given himself the inside track on one of them.
The 25-year-old who was acquired from New York in the Juan Soto trade looked pretty good in a Cactus League game against the Angels on Friday, tossing 3.0 innings with four strikeouts. He gave up one run, a solo homer to Willie Calhoun, which is the only run he's allowed over his first two appearances.
Now, technically the Padres open the regular season in less than three weeks with a 2-game series in Seoul against the Dodgers, but Musgrove and Darvish will handle those outings so the Friars don't have to have their entire rotation set until the end of the month when they resume the regular season at Petco Park against the Giants.
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But, for the sake of fun stat crunching let's take a look at how the five players most likely being considered for the last two rotation jobs are doing about halfway through Spring Training:
Randy Vasquez : 5.0 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 1.80 ERA, 4 BB, 6 K
Pedro Avila : 4.0 IP, 8 H, 4 ER, 9.00 ERA, 3 BB, 1 K
Jhony Brito : 5.0 IP, 4 H, 3 ER, 5.40 ERA, 0 BB, 4 K
Matt Waldron : 5.0 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 0.00 ERA, 0 BB, 2 K
Jairo Iriarte : 3.0 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 0.00 ERA, 1 BB, 1 K
From a sheer numbers standpoint it looks like Vasquez and Waldron are the choices. However, these are Cactus League numbers and Cactus League can be extremely weird. What these guys are doing in their bullpens and on back fields is every bit as important as what they do in exhibition games, and most of the time we don't get to see those outings.
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I suppose the bottom line here is the Padres started Spring Training with a bunch of questions about their rotation. It's looking like they don't have all the answers yet, but they have more options than they may have realized.
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