If a ballplayer chooses to wear No. 27 for the Padres, he’d best bring serious heat.
Kevin Brown, wearing 27 in his lone season here, led the 1998 Padres to 98 victories then sparked a World Series run that led to Petco Park’s funding.
Nick Pivetta chose 27 not knowing its franchise-changing history but has honored those digits by doing a fair Brown impersonation, in both substance and style.
The tall right-hander is his team’s new ace, at least until Michael King returns from injury. Pivetta stands among National League leaders in ERA (2.88), wins (9), win shares (3.3, Baseball-Reference.com), starts (19) and hits allowed per nine innings (6.8).
Pivetta appreciates the East Village ballpark whose public funding was approved by San Diego voters soon after the ’98 World Series.
A flyball pitcher, he’s 6-0 with a 2.07 ERA in his Padres home, compared to 3-2 and 4.09 on the road.
How is the feisty and exacting Canadian doing it?
In manner, he behaves somewhat like Brown, a similarly feisty and exacting ace who studied engineering at Georgia Tech.
Pivetta, sort of like Brown did, radiates a gameday intensity that leads teammates to steer clear.
Brown had an ornery streak that earned him the nickname “Hornet.” Due to life on his pitches, Brown often allowed broken-bat hits. They often lit the fuse on behind-the-scenes explosions, causing his Padres teammates to both giggle and scatter.
In an attempt to protect clubhouse property, Padres manager Bruce Bochy invited the 6-foot-4, 195-pounder to take out his anger on a 7-foot, ultra-hard plastic marlin Bochy mounted in his tiny manager’s office in Mission Valley.
Brown’s lava flowed despite his pitching dominance. He compiled league-best totals in WAR (8.6), fielding independent ERA (2.23) and home runs per nine innings (0.3) during that 1998 season. He sizzled in the postseason, striking out 16 across eight innings in a winning effort against the Astros in Houston. The pitcher he outdueled that day? Hall of Fame lefty Randy Johnson.
Pivetta, 32, isn’t volcanic like Brown, then 33.
But he’s visibly intense on game days. “He’s different,” Manny Machado said, smiling. Elaborating, Machado said Pivetta’s “emotional” actions on game days are a hit with Padres teammates, including Machado. On the other hand, when Pivetta was an opponent, his edgy style wasn’t so pleasing.
“You appreciate him more when he’s on your team,” Machado summed up.
Pivetta’s first half is by no means a big surprise.
The 6-foot-5, 210-pounder had ace-level stretches in other years. Over entire seasons, he maintained good strikeout rates. He has enjoyed rare arm health dating to his college days.
The difference with the Padres has been his greater consistency with accuracy. His pitch sequencing has improved. A sweeper he developed in recent years has provided a horizontal-breaking complement to his vertical blend of a mid-90s fastball that appears to rise and a sharp downward curveball.
And it hasn’t hurt that he’s pitching half his games in Petco Park, where Phillies star Bryce Harper fumed Sunday after his well-struck fly ball off Pivetta’s center-cut fastball was caught short of the fence.
Nobody should be surprised anymore when a veteran starting pitcher performs well after Padres talent man A.J. Preller obtains him in low- to mid-tier free agency or via trade.
Preller has thrived in this niche dating to the 2020-21 offseason, acquiring Yu Darvish, Blake Snell, Joe Musgrove, Dylan Cease, King and Martín Pérez via trade and signing Seth Lugo, Michael Wacha and Nick Martinez as free agents.
Pivetta’s four-year, $55 million contract averages $13.75 million per season. Already, per FanGraphs analytics, he’s generated a return of $22 million based on his first-half performance’s estimated worth on the free agent market. Although that hypothetical premise is inflationary, there’s no disputing that Pivetta’s big first half, which ameliorated the first-half setbacks to King, Cease and Darvish, fed into the Padres (52-44) now standing in the NL’s third and final wild-card playoff spot, half a game ahead of the Giants.
The Padres will resume their season Friday against the Washington Nationals, the team that drafted Pivetta 12 years ago out of New Mexico Junior College.
Brown, a 6-foot-4 righty whose success also began with a hot fastball, would be enjoying this show. Pivetta said he chose 27 because he likes “the number very much.” After hearing a brief rundown of Brown’s exploits in 1998, he smiled approvingly.
All told in ’98, Brown logged 296 1/3 innings. Pivetta, perhaps showing his competitive streak, quipped that in today’s pitcher-protective world, no pitcher would be allowed to try to throw that many innings.
Amid a 39 1/3-inning postseason in which he outdueled not only Johnson but Braves Hall of Famer and ‘ 98 Cy Young winner Tom Glavine and Yankees ace David Wells, the relentless Brown also persuaded manager Bruce Bochy to use him in relief.
Pivetta and his Padres teammates would welcome the same outcome as the ’98 team’s, save for the ending.
Earn a playoff spot. Win a pennant.
Originally Published: