SAN FRANCISCO -- Michael King has been a stabilizing presence in a rotation hit hard by injuries. Through seven starts, he has a 2.95 ERA. When the Padres have needed him, King has mostly delivered.
But … has King actually been good this season?
“Not at all,” he says.
That’s not modesty. It’s an honest self-assessment. If you’ve watched King’s starts, it’s hard to argue. When he was at his dominant best in 2024, King was pinpoint with his fastball command, setting up an assortment of nasty putaway weapons. He was surgical. This has not been that version of King. (Not at all.)
Thus far, King’s sinker -- his most reliable pitch -- has gone missing. He’s been unable to command it in most of his starts. That leads to longer outings -- outings in which King has needed to work that little bit harder because he doesn’t have the one weapon that sets up all the rest of his weapons.
“I’m mentally exhausted after these games,” King said. “Because I need to go straight to the scouting report. I do my scouting to get through a tough inning or situation. But then it should come back to my strengths: I have the sinker command, I just attack guys.
“Which is a good thing that I’ve still been able to put up zeros when I need to. But none of it is easy right now. Because it’s not like I’m not throwing to my strengths. I’m strictly throwing to a hitter’s weaknesses to just be able to get through these outings.”
There are two ways to look at King’s season then, as he approaches his start in Thursday’s series opener against the Cardinals at Petco Park. His peripheral numbers say he’s probably due for some regression -- that King has maybe gotten a bit lucky. Perhaps that’s true. FIP has proven to be a better indicator of future ERA than ERA itself.
But the flip side is: There’s clearly another gear for King to hit if he can iron out his mechanics and get his sinker in line. He and pitching coach Ruben Niebla are working tirelessly to do so. King said Niebla called him at 11 p.m. on Monday night with an idea and passed along some video for him to sift through.
Of course, during the starts themselves, King wants his focus to be squarely on the competition. The days between starts are for tinkering with mechanics. Then, he takes the mound and tries not to think mechanics at all. And even if those mechanics haven’t quite come together, the Padres can feel reasonably confident.
“There’s a few things that make Michael King special as a pitcher,” Niebla said. “First one being, he’s a great competitor. Second one being, he’s got great deception. Third one being, he’s got great movement to his pitches.
“You put those three together, sometimes when your fastball command is not completely there, you’re still able to have success. Because those three things make him special and different than everybody else. His [sinker] command hasn’t been what we would like right now. But he’s able to make up and compensate.”
In other words, the Padres believe there’s a high floor every time King takes the ball. That’s part of the reason they re-signed him during the offseason in the first place. King’s stuff is nasty enough -- and he’s a savvy enough competitor -- that even on nights when he’s not hitting his ceiling, the Padres can win games.
Still, King is more interested in reaching that ceiling.
“I still feel like I need to be a lot better than I am,” King said. “I told [manager Craig] Stammen before the season that I want to be the guy where he’s not even thinking about calling down to the bullpen until the seventh inning.
“But because I’m grinding, I feel like there have been a lot of outings where I’m 100 pitches through five, and now I feel like I’ve let him down and let the bullpen down. They’ve got to cover four when I want them to cover two.”
Niebla keeps telling King it’s early. It’s a process. You want to be an ace? Guess what? Aces don’t have it every night. But they stack good starts with a few great ones, and at the end of the season … they’re aces.
Then again, King has his own experience with aces, having spent years in the Yankees' bullpen before he was traded to the Padres and converted into a full-time starter.
“I remember it as a reliever with Gerrit Cole pitching,” King said. “It was like: ‘When Gerrit’s pitching, I’m checking out for the first five innings. Then I do my warmup in the sixth. Now I’m ready to go in the seventh.’
“I guarantee our bullpen does not feel that way with me.”
Then King offered an important qualifier:
“Yet.”