Padres starter Randy Vásquez is defying modern pitching logic with an old-school weapon

In this era of baseball, front offices build pitching staffs to miss bats. Spin rate, whiff rate, chase rate, and other stats are viewed to determine who is best able to get the almighty swing and miss and, ultimately, strikeouts. Pitchers who don’t are walking a fine line, and are likely always on the roster bubble.

Randy Vásquez didn’t get that memo. He’s had a perfectly solid year, with one blip in June, but in August he has a 2.57 ERA and a 0.64 WHIP, with 12 strikeouts in 28 innings. That is not how you win on the mound in 2026, but Vásquez has decided that contact management can still work.

And he’s doing it by leaning heavily on a sinker, the one pitch that actually still kind of works without getting whiffs. He’s thrown it just 16 percent of the time across the whole season, but he’s throwing it 28.7 percent of the time in August. It’s been a slow build, up from a season-low 9.6 percent in his brutal June to 18.2 percent last month to nearly 30 percent this month. And now that he’s leaned all the way in, hitters have stopped squaring him up.

The pitch that got Randy Vásquez out of the doghouse

Baseball inherently isn’t linear, and Vásquez’s season has been anything but a straight line. He started the year throwing harder and leaning heavily on a four-seamer and cutter with more changeups than before, after an offseason working with Yu Darvish. It looked like he was breaking out. But, as is often the case, the wheels came off, and it was fair to wonder if he could be trusted at all, as strikeouts dried up and so did the results. The margin is just so slim without strikeouts. 

But Vásquez has answered in August. His first start of the month was a gem. He gave up just two hits over six innings in Arizona and struck out only one batter. That shouldn’t work in 2026, but it did. His previous start was 4.2 scoreless innings as well, with just one strikeout, and it’s looking like that’s not quite the outlier it seemed to be at the time. He’s pounding the bottom of the zone, getting the sinker to wreak havoc on the hands of righties, and letting his defense take over.

He had a rougher start in Cleveland in the middle of the month, but then went seven innings against the Twins, allowing just two runs on two hits. He threw five scoreless innings against Pittsburgh on Wednesday. He’ll take the ball again, likely against a rough Reds offense looking for his 11th win. This is more than a fluke month propping up an ugly year. He’s had his moments leading up to this month, but seems to have found a version of himself that works.

But there’s that margin for error. The sinker is effective. Opponents are hitting just .111 against it. But the xBA on it is .247. They’re slugging just .139. But the xSLG is .415. Those gaps are not insignificant. Neither number is ugly, but this whole thing works when Vásquez has the sinker going, and if it becomes merely fine and not elite, that can be a problem. Vásquez has been retooling his arsenal all year, so there’s reason to believe he can find the answer to that if it becomes a problem, but even the best version of a low-strikeout pitcher needs some help from the luck gods. 

No potential regression can take away what he did in August. A pitcher can only control what he throws and where, and Vásquez has used a specific pitch to work for the last month or so. The Padres have had a need for innings and stability, and Vásquez has provided that by pitching differently than basically anyone else. The question isn’t whether he’s good now but if he can keep it up. That remains to be seen, but it’ll be interesting to see how long this goes and just how much rope the Padres will give him if things start to turn.

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