King's no-hit bid caps superb series for Padres' starters

CLEVELAND -- Just to be clear: Those looming question marks about the state of the Padres’ rotation are mostly unrelated to the starters who took the ball in Cleveland this weekend. Because right now, three-fifths of that San Diego rotation looks pretty darn stellar.

A day after Dylan Cease pitched seven innings of one-hit ball and two days after Matt Waldron stymied the Guardians for six innings, aside from a defensive miscue, Michael King followed by carrying a no-hit bid into the seventh at Progressive Field on Sunday afternoon. King tossed seven dominant frames, allowing a run on only two singles while striking out six in the Padres’ 2-1 victory.

In the process, King lowered his ERA to 3.28. He continues to show no signs of slowing in his first full season as a starting pitcher. On Sunday, King used his changeup to great success, inducing 11 whiffs on the 20 swings that Guardians hitters took against the pitch.

“The first inning was pretty telling,” said catcher Kyle Higashioka. “He made three of their best hitters look pretty bad. I could tell he was in for a good one.”

Guardians center fielder Angel Martínez spoiled King’s no-hit bid with a clean single to center, leading off the seventh. The game’s decisive play followed. José Ramírez laced a single to right, and David Peralta overthrew the cut-off man with his throw to third base. But Manny Machado pounced off the bag and fired a strike to Ha-Seong Kim at second to nab Ramírez, who would have represented the tying run.

King escaped the inning, allowing only Martínez’s run, and the bullpen held on from there. It amounted to an impressive start to the second half for the Padres -- a series win over the team that entered the weekend with the best record in the American League.

“We’ve got to play like this the rest of the way, to accomplish what we want to accomplish,” Machado said.

If they pitch like this, it’d sure go a long way. Padres starters totalled 20 innings over the weekend and allowed two runs while striking out 21 and permitting only two walks.

“It’s a good indicator of what we’re capable of,” Higashioka said. “Baseball is a sport about consistency. We’ve got to find that consistency through the end of the year in order to make a playoff push -- make the playoffs and go far.”

Of course, beyond Waldron-Cease-King, it gets tricky. The Padres’ current 1-2-3 was actually their 3-4-5 at the start of the season. But Joe Musgrove has been out since May with right elbow inflammation, and Yu Darvish, after a spate of injuries, was recently placed on the restricted list due to a personal matter. There is no indication of when -- or if -- Darvish might return this season.

So about the other 40% of the Padres rotation. Randy Vásquez has filled in admirably, and he’ll start on Tuesday in the series opener in D.C. Because of a team off-day on Monday, there’s no actual rotation vacancy until Saturday. Still, the Padres don’t presently have a fifth starter, and Musgrove’s return is at least a few weeks away.

If only there were a way to bolster that rotation, perhaps a certain date before which teams must make the remainder of their transactions with other clubs before the stretch run.

Oh, right, the Trade Deadline.

The Padres have been planning to operate as buyers ahead of the July 30 Deadline -- and this weekend almost certainly reinforced that notion. It’s possible they’d splurge for a frontline arm, but they’ve already thinned their farm with deals for Cease and Luis Arraez. The more likely option is that they fortify the group they already have with a mid- to back-end rotation piece.

In the meantime, Musgrove is making strides in his recovery. He threw his second bullpen session on Saturday and is slated for another this week in Washington. There’s no need to rush him. In Waldron, Cease and King, the Padres have the foundations, at the very least, of a formidable rotation.

“I think you’ve definitely seen flashes of it throughout the year,” King said. “Obviously, we’re still missing our big dogs. But I know we can compete against really good lineups.”

This weekend, they emphatically proved as much.