Ridiculous wrinkle in Mason Miller's Padres track record gave Craig Stammen reason to believe in Game 2 loss

Craig Stammen didn’t watch Mason Miller lose the strike zone hoping everything would fix itself. This was the most dominant reliever on his roster encountering a situation that had never burned the Padres before.

Across Miller’s previous 67 appearances this season, he hadn’t entered with a lead and left with San Diego trailing. That history doesn’t erase what happened on October 4. But it at least explains why Stammen trusted him and left him in.

The Padres asked their closer to protect a 3-2 lead for six outs in Game 2 of the NLDS. Miller breezed through the eighth, striking out two in a solid inning. The ninth went sideways. He walked Christian Yelich, then Sal Frelick. After retiring Andrew Vaughn, he walked Gary Sánchez to load the bases.

Jackson Chourio followed with the walk-off two-run single that sent the Padres home facing a 2-0 series deficit.

Miller completely lost the strike zone. Of his 40 pitches, only 21 were strikes. He put the tying and winning runs on base without making Milwaukee earn it the hard way.

Still, we can understand why Stammen stood there and waited for Miller to turn it around.

Craig Stammen’s trust in Mason Miller didn’t come out of nowhere

Stammen also confirmed that Adrián Morejón was unavailable after throwing 31 pitches over two innings in Game 1, according to 97.3 The Fan. Morejón is usually the obvious answer when San Diego needs a lefty to put out a fire. This time, he wasn’t the answer, which makes sense for why they wanted Miller to get six outs in the first place.

Jason Adam remained an option, but asking another reliever to enter with the bases loaded against Chourio was hardly a clean escape route. At that point, Stammen had to choose between Miller at his shakiest and somebody else being dropped directly into the game’s worst possible spot.

He chose Miller. And it’s not like that was some insane choice. He had converted 38 of 41 save opportunities during the regular season, finished with a 1.67 ERA and set a Padres reliever record with 129 strikeouts. He had already handled two six-out assignments without allowing a run. Before Sunday, a walk-off blown save simply wasn’t part of his 2026 season.

The third walk is where the defense of Stammen gets a little shaky. By then, Miller just wasn’t right. He was trying to rediscover the plate while the entire series sat on it. Stammen had enough evidence to make a move, even if every available alternative came with risk.

The truth is that Stammen’s faith was earned, and it still failed him. But pinning this entire loss on one pitcher or one managerial decision would let too many Padres escape scrutiny. San Diego failed to punish a Milwaukee defense that committed three errors, Manny Machado ran the club out of an opportunity, Jake Cronenworth helped turn a 3-1 lead into a one-run game with a costly throwing error, and the offense never added the run that could have changed the ninth. Miller owned the final collapse, and Stammen waited too long for him to escape it. The Padres spent the previous eight innings making sure that one bad inning could sink them.

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