Jeremiah

Estrada

With Robert Suarez not available after working in back-to-back games, the Padres to Estrada, and he was up to the challenge. It’s the third save of the season for the 26-year-old, and his ERA is a solid 2.93 over the first 94 games of the season. If Estrada ever got the chance to close, there’d be a lot to like.

Suarez has dropped his appeal after the league reduced his original three-game suspension to a two-game ban for hitting Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani with a pitch during last week’s series against Los Angeles. It’ll be some combination of Jason Adam, Jeremiah Estrada and Adrian Morejon handling the closing duties while he’s out.

After the Padres tied the game in the ninth and scored the go-ahead run in the tenth, Estrada was summoned to close things out. A sacrifice bunt moved the runner on second before two groundouts ended the game with Estrada’s second save of the season.

With Robert Suarez getting the night off after pitching in four of the last five games, Estrada got the game to pick up his first save of the season as he was summoned to end the game with a two-run lead. He worked around one hit, striking out two to secure the win for San Diego.

In Estrada’s defense, he really should have Christian Yelich struck out to begin the ninth, which probably would have led to a scoreless frame. Instead, he allowed on a walk to Yelich and two hits. It was quite curious that the Padres decided to use Estrada and avoid Robert Suarez tonight. Both had worked the previous two days, but Suarez threw fewer pitches in those outings, and had, unlike Estrada, gone four straight days without working previously. He is also the older of the two by eight years. If we were the Padres, we’d consider Estrada the more important reliever of the two going forward. Suarez, though, is in the second year of a five-year, $46 million contract.

Estrada isn’t 100 percent, but he feels like he can go. The Padres missed him last night, as Enyel De Los Santos blew a two-run lead in the eighth. Still, the team won in the bottom of the ninth anyway.

Estrada only got the ninth tonight because there was a tougher matchup for Robert Suarez in the eighth, but he did a great job with it. He’s allowed just one run in 10 2/3 innings since the Padres called him up on Apr. 26. It’s safe to say that if the Cubs had it to do all over again, they wouldn’t have waived him to open a spot on the 40-man last November.

For a few days at least, Estrada will add a fresh arm to the Padres’ bullpen as the team determines how they would like to handle the rotation spot vacated by Randy Vasquez. Estrada has been fantastic at Triple-A El Paso this season, posting a 2.08 ERA, 0.81 WHIP and an eye-popping 20/3 K/BB ratio across 8 2/3 innings in eight appearances.

Estrada was with the Padres for their season-opening series in South Korea against the Dodgers, but will head to the minors in advance of the club’s stateside opener.

It was reported last week that Estrada cleared waivers, but it seems that wasn’t the case. The 25-year-old had a 5.51 ERA in 17 relief appearances for the Cubs the last two seasons. He looked rather intriguing as a relief prospect a year ago, but his stuff wasn’t quite the same last season.