Padres' rookie pitcher haunted by troubling stat that was not a problem in minors

San Diego had high hopes for one of their top pitching prospects, but his early struggles could force their hand in 2024.

Eric Cole

Seattle Mariners v San Diego Padres / Orlando Ramirez/GettyImages

Tuesday night was a start that San Diego Padres pitcher Adam Mazur would probably just prefer to forget. In his 4 2/3 innings of work in the Padres' loss to the Mariners, he gave up five runs on seven hits with two walks, two hit by pitches, and six strikeouts — not exactly what you want to see from one of your top pitching prospects while San Diego's rotation deals with multiple key injuries.

Aside from just being objectively bad, Mazur's struggles have been strange. After being really good at limiting walks while in the minor leagues, his command of the strike zone has seemingly left him in the majors and may force some major adjustments for him and the Padres going forward.

Adam Mazur's issues with walks have caught Padres off guard

The Padres' second-round pick from the 2022 draft had a pretty solid record of controlling the strike zone in the minors. He had just 17 walks in his 96 innings of work in 2023, and this season between Double-A and Triple-A he had walked just nine batters in his 10 starts this year.

Unfortunately, the story has been very different once Mazur made it to the big leagues. In Mazur's seven starts since getting called up in early June, he has managed to walk 19 batters in just 31 innings of work. His two walks on Tuesday would have actually represented an improvement except that he also hit two batters. The walks are running his pitch counts up, forcing him out of games early and putting pressure on the bullpen, ultimately leading to a lot of runs as his 7.84 ERA clearly shows.

At some point, the Padres going to have to figure something out with Mazur given their position in the playoff race. With Yu Darvish out indefinitely and Joe Musgrove still on the shelf, the Padres aren't loaded with short-term options to fill the gaps. He simply has to find a way to hit the corners with his off-speed and breaking stuff, because opposing batters are not respecting those pitches right now.

If he can't, the onus will be on the Padres' front office to take action. AJ Preller and Co. are already clearly shopping at the top of the starting pitching trade market, but how aggressive they will be may hinge on Mazur's ability to adjust going forward, along with the health of the rest of their rotation.

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Eric Cole

I started my career writing about baseball covering the Atlanta Braves for SB Nation's Talking Chop back in 2015 which has since been renamed Battery Power. After years of writing for those fine folks, I made the decision to take over as Site Expert at House That Hank Built before becoming a full-time MLB Staff Writer for FanSided in 2023. Along the way, I have been a guest on multiple ESPN radio affiliates as well as 680 The Fan and 92.9 The Game to discuss Braves baseball and especially Braves prospects and was a long-time host on the Battery Power podcast. These days, I continue to write about the Braves as well as covering the Astros, Padres, and Angels with particular expertise with minor league coverage, the MLB Draft, and bashing Anthony Rendon when possible. When I am not writing about or talking about baseball (which is seldom), I am an avid baseball card collector (Maddux and Soroka being my primary personal collections) and I also collect shark teeth. All other sports are mostly dead to me as my Bills have broken my heart too many times.