San Diego Padres: Pitching Matchups for Series Opener with STL

The San Diego Padres will welcome the St. Louis Cardinals into Petco Park for a four-game series beginning tonight. Here are tonight’s probable starters.

The San Diego Padres will send offseason addition and stellar reliever, Jordan Lyles to the mound tonight to make his first start of the season. In thirteen relief appearances for the Friars this season, Lyles has pitched to a 3.66 earned-run average with sixteen strikeouts and seven walks allowed.

With the recent removal of Bryan Mitchell from the Padres’ rotation, Andy Green decided to forgo any qualms about removing one of his more effective relievers from the bullpen mix in favor of utilizing his strengths as a pitcher in a starters role. Here’s to that all working out to plan!

Hopefully, Lyles can translate the success he’s had this season with his changeup (-1.24 runs below league average when using his change) and keep the Cardinals hitters off-balance enough to be effective.

That’s no easy task with the amount of talent littered throughout this St. Louis lineup. Tommy Pham and Jose Martinez have been tearing up the National League and provide the Cards with some pop that can be placed throughout the batting order.

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Padres face a tough task tonight in Mikolas

Miles Mikolas will start for the St. Louis Cardinals tonight.

Mikolas is 4-0 on the season and carries with him a 2.70 earned-run average (eighth among qualified starters in the National League) heading into tonight’s contest.

Originally a seventh-round draft pick of the Padres in 2009, the 29-year-old right-hander made his way back to MLB this season after spending three seasons playing for the Yomiuri Giants of Nippon Professional Baseball.

In 40 innings pitched this season, the Jupiter, FL native has himself a sparkling 31-to-2 strikeout-to-walk ratio and a sub-1.000 WHIP (0.975, to be exact). He leads the major leagues with his 15.50 strikeout-to-walk ratio and has an ERA+ of 142.

He throws his fastball 46.2% of the time, as per Fangraphs, his curveball at a 25% rate, his slider at a 20.9% clip, and his sinker 18.4% of the time. Talk about mixing it up. Yeesh.

Next: Lucchesi, Bullpen Lead in Win

After a rousing, hard-fought win over the Washington Nationals last night, another mark in the win-column would do this team some good.

With the stuff that Mikolas has been throwing out there so far this season, the San Diego Padres will need to take advantage of all the chances that they’re afforded.