The good news for the Padres is that they won’t have to face Brandon Woodruff again this season, unless San Diego sees the Milwaukee Brewers meet in the National League playoffs.
The bad news: they have a second date with Brewers ace Corbin Burnes on Tuesday night.
“Coming in, we knew this was going to be a tough series for us,” Padres manager Jayce Tingler said Monday before his team lost for a second time to Woodruff, falling 5-3.
Woodruff is 2-0 against the Padres this season, giving up one run on four hits and three walks with 15 strikeouts in 13 innings. Now, the Padres catch the other half of the Brewers’ aces. And Burnes was even tougher than Woodruff when the Padres hosted the Brewers earlier this season.
Burnes pitched six shutout innings against the Padres on April 20. He gave up four hits with 10 strikeouts — giving him 40 strikeouts to start the season without issuing a walk. The day before, Woodruff allowed a run on a single hit over six innings.
The Padres had won nine straight games and held the best record in the majors at 30-17 on Monday when they faced the Brewers in the opener of a four-game series. But the Padres still haven’t found the win column against the Brewers, who have defeated San Diego in four straight games and have already won the season series with three games remaining.
“Woodruff was Woodruff,” Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. “What was different is we got him some runs.”
Tuesday’s matchup pits Burnes (2-3, 1.79 ERA) and Joe Musgrove (4-4, 2.47 ERA).
Burnes’ ERA would rank tied for sixth in the majors (Woodruff’s 1.41 leads) but he doesn’t have enough innings to qualify. Musgrove’s ERA is the league’s 13th-best mark, and on April 9 he threw the first no-hitter in the Padres’ 53-year history.
But Burnes ERA was 0.37 after his first meeting with the Padres. He has made only three starts since around a trip to the injured list. In those three outings, he has given up eight runs (seven earned) on 15 hits and two walks with 27 strikeouts in 16 innings for a 3.94 ERA.
Burnes has a 0.620 WHIP, a .159 opponents’ batting average, an average of 15 strikeouts per nine innings and a 33.5-to-one strikeout-to-walk ratio in 2021.
Musgrove makes his second start against the Brewers this season. When matched against Woodruff back on April 19, he suffered the loss despite giving up only two runs on four hits and a walk while striking out a career-high 13 in seven innings.
Musgrove will be making his 10th start of the season Tuesday. The Padres are 5-4 when he starts. Musgrove has won two straight decisions — home games against the Cardinals and Rockies — by allowing a run on seven hits to go along with four walks and 16 strikeouts in 12 innings.