Now that the Padres season is over after losing the NLDS 3-1 to the Milwaukee Brewers, some musings from this series:

• Whether Ty France’s fly ball that hit the roof would have been foul, caught in the field of play or a home run without hitting the roof, the biggest thing to me is the American Family Field ground rules with hitting the roof. I know other ballparks have similar rules but it doesn’t make sense to me that a ball that hits the roof has different rules in fair and foul territory. And it doesn’t make sense that the fair territory treats it as though it didn’t hit anything, when it clearly did hitting the roof which changed the ball’s trajectory, like if it hit the outfield wall. So I’m not sure why this wouldn’t just be considered a ground rule double or a dead ball since it’s not longer caught off the bat like a normal fly ball.
• I’m not sure why Randy Vasquez was on the roster while Walker Buehler was on the paternity list for the first two games of the series. I actually saw that as a genius move to have Vasquez available for two games but would have expected him to piggyback Robbie Ray (to have a righty after the lefty) in Game 1 or throw some innings in relief considering his good numbers against the Brewers, though he last faced them in 2025. Especially considering the Padres were only carrying 11 pitchers, the tenuous situation of the starters and not wanting to overuse the bullpen.
• I’m not surprised the Padres would have Morejon go out for a second inning in Game 1 even after giving up the lead. He’s done two innings many times this season and in the playoffs you still want to keep a deficit as is for you to have a chance to come back (which had potential with the Ty France roof ball). Just ended up being bad luck when he had a sore shoulder and didn’t pitch the rest of the series.
• Game 2 with Mason Miller trying to get a six out save also wasn’t surprising. He had three days off and it was the 2-3-4 hitters in the 8th inning so I can see why you go to your closer for six outs and other teams have done it in previous postseasons and this one as well. You would hope in the 9th inning he would just go right after the bottom of the lineup (especially when Gary Sanchez was the pinch hitter for the #9 spot) as bringing Jackson Chourio up is a bad recipe with Miller laboring at that point and Chourio being a good fastball hitter. Once the Padres got down 0-2 after losing this game this way, you just had a bad feeling for climbing out of this hole against a really good team.
• Kudos to Michael King for starting Game 2 and then closing out the last six outs of Game 3. That’s a difficult ask regardless of using a bullpen day to pitch instead and shows you what a gamer he is. It’s unfortunate that he couldn’t go longer in Game 2 as he was dealing with a no hitter for 4 2/3 innings before starting to run out of gas in the 5th. I don’t mind the move to bring in the bullpen in the bottom of the 6th when this happened in Game 2 because it’s the playoffs and King has had some blowup innings this season.
• With the season over (wait til next year again for us Padres fans), I would try re-signing King, Morejon and France. Morejon is probably going to be the toughest because it doesn’t make sense to sign him to closer money if Miller is going to continue to be the primary closer so some other team will offer him a really big deal to be their closer.
• We’ll see how long the lockout is and if the owners do get their salary cap. I would guess we won’t miss the whole season but will miss some time, maybe a month or two since I don’t see the sides really negotiating until February 2027 when spring training would start. So see you sometime next season and hopefully we get a full season.