Is Josh Hader broken?

In his last two appearances, Josh Hader has lost the ability to throw his best pitch for a strike. That's a problem without a clear solution.

Okay. That sucked.

The San Diego Padres have lost 4 of their last 6 games, all of them against the very bad Miami Marlins and the clearly tanking Washington Nationals. That’s not ideal!

I’m not going to pretend to know what is going on with the team, if they’re just getting railroaded by the whole Fernando Tatis Jr. suspension of if there’s something else at play here, but I’m pretty sure I know where it’s going from here.

But let’s start by talking about the man of the hour, Josh Hader.

Since the Padres acquired Hader from the Milwaukee Brewers, he has pitched 4 times in 3 weeks. His first two outings seemed fine and continued the path he had been on post-all star break of looking more like the Josh Hader we’ve come to expect.

Then he got rocked by the Giants in a game where he obviously couldn’t throw his slider for a strike. He gave up 1 hit and 3 walks in a blown save appearance that wasn’t talked about too much because Manny Machado hit a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 9th inning.

Then Hader had NINE DAYS OFF. This is mostly a result of circumstances, as the Padres have won games by 6, 5, 6 and 7 runs since Hader’s blown save. Not a lot of save opportunities were available, although the extended time off makes me think that the team may have already been a little worried about the healthiness of his arm.

Anyway, he came in last night and….again, couldn’t throw the slider for a strike. When he went in the zone with his fastball, it got clobbered, so he nibbled to the point of giving up a walk and turning Yu Davish’s stellar night into a L in the win-loss column.

Is it possible that Hader is broken? Sure. Would I be surprised if he was pitching through some arm pain and the Padres hadn’t yet given him an MRI? Nope! And, for a MLB pitcher with as much mileage as he has, it’s always been surprising that he’s never had Tommy John surgery.

At this point, I’m putting Hader and Josh Bell (0-4 last night) in the same category. Something is obviously not clicking for either one of them, but the Padres invested too much in both of them to give up. They have to keep sending them out there, working with them in the meantime, and trying to get them back to the players that they were before they put on the Padres uniform. There’s really no other option. They’re not going to be competitive in the playoffs without them.

Anyway, I’m sitting in the San Diego Airport and headed off for vacation. I wasn’t even going to write anything this morning, but I felt it necessary to point out that Hader might be broken (and he might not!). It also felt necessary to remember that he’s going through the same thing as Josh Bell and we should give them equal amounts of grace.

Most importantly, I think we need to remember that the team needs both of these guys (especially since Tatis isn’t coming back this year).

With that, I’m off. Go Padres.