Nick Pivetta leaves with injury, Padres still sweep Rockies

Jeff Sanders, The San Diego Union-Tribune on Apr 12, 2026

Published in Baseball

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SAN DIEGO — Ty France hit his first home run at Petco Park in more than five years. Ramón Laureano added shots late. The San Diego Padres paired their burgeoning slug with small-ball sensibilities in a 7-2 win that extended their win streak to five games and upped their total to 10.

Only the two-time World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers have more.

Yet amid all the positives in a four-game sweep of the Colorado Rockies, the Padres’ biggest question got all that more complicated on a gloomy Sunday afternoon at Petco Park.

Right-hander Nick Pivetta walked off the mound with a trainer in the top of the fourth inning with elbow stiffness, casting quite the shadow on the turnaround following the team’s 2-5 start to the season.

Pivetta was topping 95 mph in the first inning Sunday, but a drop to 92.2 mph on his four-seamer for two fastballs thrown to Eduoard Julian to start the fourth inning. That second sub-par four-seamer on a 2-1 pitch prompted manager Craig Stammen and head athletic trainer Mark Rogow to hop out of the dugout and join Pivetta on the mound.

It was a brief conversation, with Pivetta biting his glove during the visit with Stammen and Rogow before exiting the game.

Pivetta struck out four over three no-hit innings to begin Sunday’s game, as he’s looked more and more like his 2025 version following an opening-day clunker (3 IP, 6 ER).

A career year in 2025 saw Pivetta lead the Padres rotation with 13 wins, a 2.87 ERA, 190 strikeouts and 181 2/3 innings.

For a team that lost Dylan Cease to free agency, re-signed Michael King after an injury-plagued year and was hoping for both the continued maturation of Randy Vásquez and Joe Musgrove’s seamless return from Tommy John surgery, Pivetta began this season as something of a known commodity, although he had to prove last year was not a one-off.

At the very least, Pivetta was someone to build around while figuring out what Walker Buehler and Germán Márquez could offer to the back of the rotation.

Now, if Pivetta is forced to miss time, the Padres will have to further dip into the depth pooling below the majors.

Knuckleballer Matt Waldron could be first up, as he’s thrown 12 shutout innings across three rehab starts for Triple-A El Paso, including 58 pitches over five shutout innings on Thursday. He is returning from a spring surgery on his lower half, which knocked him out of the competition for a spot in the back of the rotation.

Right-hander Griffin Canning (Achilles) is also rehabbing at Triple-A El Paso. But he’s just two starts into that process and likely won’t be an option before May, while Musgrove has yet to resume throwing bullpens following his spring setback.

France’s fifth-inning homer — his first at Petco Park since Aug. 20, 2020, before he was traded to the Seattle Mariners — opened up a 3-2 lead. By the time Merrill led off the seventh with a homer, the Rockies were on their fourth pitcher as left-hander Kyle Freeland was scratched just before the game with shoulder soreness.

The Padres countered that curveball with small ball as Merrill bunted runners to second and third in the first inning ahead of Manny Machado’s sacrifice fly to center. The next inning, Bryce Johnson pushed France to third base after France’s leadoff double and Freddy Fermin gave the Padres a 2-0 lead on a sacrifice fly to left.

Machado’s run-scoring single in the fifth inning and Laureano’s two-run homer in the sixth allowed the Padres’ bullpen to keep the Rockies at bay, even after Pivetta’s unexpected exit.

Left-hander Kyle Hart allowed two runs in 2 1/3 innings, right-hander David Morgan struck out four of the six batters he faced, Wandy Peralta turned in a scoreless eighth and Bradgley Rodriguez did the same in the ninth.

All told, that quartet combined to allow just two hits — Brett Sullivan’s two-run double in the fifth inning off Hart and Hunter Goodman’s two-out single in the ninth off Rodriguez — after Pivetta’s untimely exit.

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