When the Padres needed their ace, he was there.
With All-World closer Mason Miller out for Game 3 of the NLDS after his wife went into labor, it was unclear who would close for San Diego if it had a late-inning lead. The answer? Game 2 starter Michael King on one day of rest.
King entered in the top of the eighth inning with his team up, 4–3, and worked around a two-out single by David Hamilton. He got Game 2 hero Jackson Chourio to ground out to end the inning. No one in the Padres bullpen stirred. It was his game to finish.
After a quick bottom of the eighth, King returned to the mound and endured a bumpier road to the finish line. He struck out Jake Bauers, then walked William Contreras after a nine-pitch battle. His command wavered and he walked Brice Turang as well, pushing pinch runner Luis Lara to second base. The tension was high at Petco Park. More than 47,000 Padres fans were as loud as they’d been all season as Christian Yelich stepped into the box.
On the first pitch he saw, Yelich lit up an 84 mph slider. The ball left the bat at 107.1 mph, but it was on the ground right to shortstop Xander Bogaerts. He fielded it cleanly, stepped on second base and fired a strike to Ty France at first, completing a game-ending double play to give King his first save since 2023, when he was with the Yankees.
The 31-year-old went five innings on Sunday, allowing three hits and one run while striking out six. He threw 72 pitches and left with a 2–1 lead. The Padres wound up losing 4–3 after Miller blew a save. King had already volunteered his services after Game 2. Then, when he arrived at Petco Park on Tuesday, he made sure Stammen knew nothing had changed.
“He came in the office today and said, ‘I’m available to pitch. I’m available to pitch the next day, and I’m available to pitch Game 5,’” Stammen said. “He’s got an attitude of, ‘I’ll do anything to help the team win.’”
King hadn’t waited until Tuesday to make his intentions known. According to pitching coach Ruben Niebla, he volunteered almost immediately after Game 2.
According to Niebla, King said, “Put me in. I’ll be ready to go to the bullpen.”
For a Padres team that was missing its closer, and had its setup man, Adrian Morejón, down with fatigue, King’s two-inning save was enormous. Tuesday would normally have been around the time King threw his between-start bullpen. But when he was asked if the two-inning appearance essentially served as his bullpen session, King had a surprising answer.
“I’ll probably do another one tomorrow,” he said. “I think that everybody out there wants to contribute. I know that I have bullets in my arm that I don’t want to save.”
How remarkable was that performance? Since saves became an official stat in 1969, King is now the only MLB pitcher to start a postseason game, then notch a save spanning at least two innings within the next two days. (If you’re thinking about Madison Bumgarner in the 2014 World Series, his Game 7 heroics came three days after his previous start.)
It was also the first time in King’s career pitching multiple innings on one day of rest after working multiple innings in his previous appearance. It was just the second save of six outs or more in his career, and his first save as a Padre.
King’s teammates were blown away by his performance.
“Impressive. So impressive, man. He has carried us in a way. So huge,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said. “He’s one of the leaders in this ball club, man, and we see him today going out there for a two-inning save. It’s off the charts.”
France was shocked King was even available.
“Before the game started, he said he was available to do that tonight, and I kind of scratched my head a little bit,” France said. “But, you know, that was impressive. That’s not easy to do. And I know he’s riding on adrenaline and emotion, but that was one heck of a bullpen he threw tonight.”
Game 3 starter Nick Pivetta lasted 4 ⅓ innings before yielding to the bullpen. As a fellow starter, he understood the difficulty of what King had just done.
“I mean, it’s not an easy thing to do, but he’s capable of doing it, stepping up in those moments,” Pivetta said. “It’s great to see, it’s exciting to see, and having him come in and shut the door like that, it’s very encouraging.”
Miller and Morejón are both expected to be available for Game 4. The Padres survived without their two elite bullpen arms on Tuesday night, but it took their ace making history for that to happen.
“If you’re in an elimination game, you want everybody to be all in on it, and I feel like, not just me included, we have a bunch of dogs down there that are all in,” King said.
The Padres will be back in another elimination game on Wednesday in Game 4. They’re still alive because King was all in.
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