Walker Buehler looked lost on the mound Wednesday. Not the normal kind of lost where a pitcher shakes off a catcher or walks a couple guys. The kind where he couldn’t find the plate, couldn’t miss bats, and watched the Cubs treat his best pitches like batting practice.
Nine earned runs in four innings. Career high. Three home runs on off-speed stuff that kept catching too much of the zone. Dansby Swanson hit two of them and looked like he was taking early work in a cage.
This wasn’t just a bad start. It was the kind of outing that makes you wonder if the guy who dominated in October is ever coming back for real.
The Mechanics Look Off and Hitters Notice
Buehler’s fastball command has been drifting for weeks. Against Chicago it flat out abandoned him. Pitches meant for the edges leaked into the heart of the plate. His curveball didn’t have the snap it used to. The Cubs sat on mistakes and crushed them.
There were flashes earlier this season where he looked like his old self. Three or four innings where the velocity was there and the breaking ball had bite. But those moments are getting harder to find between these blowups. The Padres brought him in to be a top-of-the-rotation stabilizer. Right now he looks like a guy searching for answers in the middle of a season that’s slipping.
What This Means for San Diego’s Plans
The Padres built this rotation around Buehler being a guy who could match up with anyone in a playoff series. If he’s giving up nine runs in four innings to a .500 team in July, that plan needs rethinking. Every shelling like this taxes the bullpen for the next two or three games. It forces the front office to have conversations they didn’t want to have this soon.
Buehler has the track record. Nobody’s questioning his toughness or his ability to bounce back from a bad game. But this wasn’t a one-inning meltdown or a few unlucky bounces. It was four straight frames of the Cubs teeing off. The kind of start that leaves a manager staring at the dugout ceiling wondering if the guy needs a skip or maybe a trip to the development complex.
The next few outings won’t just tell us about Buehler’s season. They’ll tell us whether the Padres can still believe in the version of him they thought they were getting. Right now that belief is wobbling.
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