BREAKING: Nick Pivetta to pitch Opening Day
· Yahoo Sports
It’s official. Nick Pivetta will start for the San Diego Padres this Thursday. They’ll put up their best fight on Opening Day against fearsome lefty Tarik Skubal and the Detroit Tigers as they seek to return to the postseason for the third year in a row.
Pivetta will be the fourth starting pitcher in as many years to take the mound for San Diego’s Opening Day.
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The unicorn year
Pivetta will pitch on March 26 for the Friars after having the best season of his career last year. Pivetta and Padres fans were waiting for manager Craig Stammen to announce the Opening Day starter. If Pivetta can retain anything from last year, the starting rotation will be a lot closer to elite than it is now.
There’s obviously upside, tremendously so, but it’s shaky. Pivetta has never had an ERA below 4.00 until last year’s 2.87 mark. Michael King and Joe Musgrove are coming back from injury, and the back end of the rotation looks a little messy.
Pivetta was a workhorse last year. He pitched 181 ⅔ innings and almost topped 200 strikeouts across 31 starts.
The Padres desperately needed him then and they may need him even more now.
Concerning news out of camp
A few weeks ago, Pivetta missed a start in Spring Training due to arm fatigue. Immediately questions of depth sprang up and San Diego fans everywhere lost their collective minds.
But then he started against the Cleveland Guardians with his fastball sitting around 94-96 mph and all was well again.
The hope is that even if Pivetta isn’t as much of a surprise ace pitcher as he turned out to be last season, he’ll still be serviceable and eat innings this season. There’s plenty of underlying metrics to suggest the turnaround he had will continue to be the case, but nothing will be sure until it’s proved on the mound this season.
However Pivetta’s season shakes out, the Friar Faithful can be excited to watch him duel it out against one of the best pitchers on the planet this Thursday. He has the stuff to dominate this Tigers lineup. And this Padres lineup has the ability to take Skubal out.
With Opening Day finally here, one thing’s certain: we’ll all be cheering for a San Diego win Thursday.