The San Diego Padres walked into Dodger Stadium on Friday already dragging a six-game losing streak. Then manager Craig Stammen dropped the news: two more players are headed to the injured list, and one of them got there after a genuinely scary moment off the field.
Right-hander Randy Vasquez landed on the 15-day IL with a bruised right ankle. But the bruise wasn’t the alarming part. Vasquez fainted Thursday night while walking to get an X-ray on that same ankle and ended up in the emergency room. Tests came back clean — no fracture, no major head injury — and the team thinks he’ll be back soon. Still, a 27-year-old starting pitcher collapsing in a hospital hallway is not the kind of update you want to hear before a rivalry game.
The Padres also placed catcher Freddy Fermin on the 10-day IL with a head contusion. He took a foul ball off his mask Thursday and left early. Stammen said Fermin passed concussion protocol, so the team is calling it a bruise. That’s the second IL stint for Fermin this season after he missed time earlier with a concussion.
Rotation Already in Shambles Gets Thinner
Vasquez isn’t having a great year — 4.71 ERA across 84 innings, with a 7.75 ERA over his last eight starts and three straight starts where he didn’t get through four innings. But losing him still hurts because the Padres rotation is basically a MASH unit right now. Nick Pivetta and Joe Musgrove are both rehabbing major elbow injuries and won’t be back before August. Lucas Giolito has elbow inflammation. Matt Waldron is nursing a right brachialis strain. German Marquez just returned from a two-month IL stint and threw three effective relief innings Thursday, so he’ll likely slide into Vasquez’s rotation spot.
The pitching staff has been getting hammered over the last month, allowing the sixth-most runs in baseball. The rotation owns the third-fewest innings pitched in that span with a 5.27 ERA. San Diego entered Friday at .500 for the first time since April 8 and 3.5 games back in the Wild Card race. The losing streak is at six.
One Catcher Returns, Another Goes Down
The Padres called up catcher Luis Campusano from his rehab assignment to take Fermin’s spot. Campusano missed about two months with a fractured toe but was hitting .288 with a .958 OPS in 18 games before he got hurt. He only played two rehab games before getting activated, which suggests the team needs him now. Rodolfo Duran stays on the roster as the backup catcher.
On the reliever side, there’s something resembling good news. Jason Adam’s MRI showed no structural damage to his right shoulder — just a minor muscular strain. The All-Star reliever has a 2.51 ERA in 36 appearances this season and said he hopes to return in early to mid-August after feeling shoulder soreness following a multi-inning outing earlier this week. The Padres could use him. Their bullpen has been getting stretched thin trying to cover for a rotation that can’t go deep.
San Diego now turns around and has to face a Dodgers lineup that’s been waiting for them. First pitch Friday night, and the Padres are trying to stop a seven-game slide before it starts.
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