Hader's absence in 8th looms large

SAN DIEGO -- Their playoff hopes on the verge of being extinguished entirely, the Padres clung to a one-run lead in the eighth inning on Monday night at Oracle Park. The bases were loaded with two outs and a tiring Robert Suarez on the mound.

Giants manager Gabe Kapler called for pinch-hitter Michael Conforto, a left-handed batter. With an ailing Wilmer Flores almost certainly unavailable, San Francisco was out of righty-hitting bench options. The matchup screamed for closer Josh Hader, perhaps the sport’s most dominant left-handed reliever. But Hader hasn’t pitched more than three outs in a regular-season game since 2020 -- and he evidently won’t be doing so for the Padres this year.

Sure enough, that matchup went against the Padres. Suarez -- called upon for four outs himself -- surrendered an opposite-field single. Two runs scored, and San Diego squandered six dominant innings from Cy Young favorite Blake Snell in a 2-1 loss to the Giants. Hader only watched from the right-center-field bullpen, as the team’s elimination number dwindled to 1.

The Padres acquired Hader at the 2022 Trade Deadline fully understanding his reluctance to pitch multiple innings and to pitch three days in a row. They felt it was worth the trade-off, considering his dominance -- and Hader has been dominant, posted a 1.19 ERA across 53 innings this season.

But with a bullpen that has otherwise dealt with injuries and inconsistencies, Hader’s pitching restrictions have come back to bite the Padres on multiple occasions this season. Monday night was among the most glaring.

Asked for his thinking behind not making himself available for four outs on Monday, or really, at any point down the stretch, Hader said: “It’s the situation that we were at.”

That comment required some clarification and context. Earlier in the season, after the Padres had lost games in which Hader was unavailable, both Hader and manager Bob Melvin indicated that those decisions were made with the big-picture view in mind. They needed a healthy Hader for the stretch run.

And yet, in the season’s final week, in a spot that called for his dominant left arm, Hader wasn’t used. So why not now? What happened to that plan?

“Are we in the playoff race?” Hader asked, rhetorically.

Hader is a pending free agent, set to be the sport’s most sought-after relief arm. He was asked if he made his restrictions with the offseason in mind.

"It has nothing to do with the offseason,” Hader said. “It's the now, it's the health, it's the making it through the entire season -- 162 games is not an easy task to do. You see guys work overloads, they get injured.”

Hader has proven at least somewhat receptive to pitching three days in a row, having done so on three separate occasions this year. But given the context of the season, he hasn’t been amenable to four-out saves.

Asked whether the team had a conversation with Hader about that, Melvin said, “We talked to him some, yeah. … That’s just the way it happened tonight.”

Those specific discussions did not take place on Monday. Hader was never asked to face Conforto. But, essentially, Hader’s unavailability for four outs was implied from past conversations.

“It was not [talked about] today,” Hader said. “But we’ve talked before. We’ve had discussions.”

Hader converted multiple four-out saves in the postseason last year (though he notably wasn’t called upon for six outs in NLCS Game 5 in Philadelphia, when Suarez surrendered Bryce Harper’s pennant-clinching home run).

Hader was asked Monday whether his thought process regarding four-out saves might have changed if the Padres had been closer to playoff contention, or, indeed, in the postseason.

“It could have been,” Hader said. “Who knows? Like I said, it could’ve been different in a lot of ways.”