The San Diego Padres open a weekend series against the Minnesota Twins at Petco Park on Friday, and the matchup lands with both teams still in the hunt for October. San Diego has won seven of its last 10 games and holds a one-game lead over the Arizona Diamondbacks for the third wild-card spot, while Minnesota is 5-5 over its last 10 and would be in the playoffs if the season ended today.
That is why the first game of Twins vs Padres has drawn attention before the first pitch is thrown. Connor Prielipp is scheduled to start for Minnesota on Friday night, but San Diego has not yet announced its starter, even though Randy Vásquez is expected to handle bulk innings. Vásquez is 8-6 with a 4.30 ERA across 111 innings, a profile that gives the Padres some stability even if the official assignment for the opener remains unsettled.
Prielipp has not been nearly as sharp. He is 3-6 with a 5.34 ERA and allowed eight earned runs and eight hits against the Philadelphia Phillies in his previous start. He has also given up at least three earned runs in each of his past three starts, which leaves Minnesota with a starter who has been named but not fully trusted by recent results.
The contrast becomes even sharper on Saturday, when Casey Mize is scheduled to start for San Diego and Dean Kremer is set for Minnesota. Mize is 5-7 with a 3.18 ERA, while Kremer is 2-4 with a 5.40 ERA. Mize arrived in a trade deadline deal with the Detroit Tigers, and his first turn with the Padres was rough: he allowed eight earned runs in 3.1 innings against the Arizona Diamondbacks. Since then, he has steadied himself, giving up two earned runs and eight hits across his previous two starts and then allowing three hits over six innings against Cleveland.
That rebound is exactly why Mize would not dismiss the bad debut as something that should be brushed aside. He said he was asked whether it was an outlier, and he answered that he did not want to call it one before adding that, yes, it was. He also said he is not expecting six shutout innings every time, only a chance to keep the Padres in the game more often than not. For a club trying to protect a slim postseason cushion, that is the point of the series: not perfection, but enough pitching to stay ahead. The next confirmed step is Friday night in San Diego, with the opener still carrying one unresolved detail that matters more because the race is so tight.
