Michael the Dancing King Leads the Padres Past the Braves in Game 1

In your most prim and proper ballet teacher voice, repeat after me, “Demi-plié and stretch. Demi-plié and stretch.” The demi-plié is the first foundational move taught to new ballerinas. Its name translates from French to “small bend.” When pitching from the windup, Michael King comes set, gently bends at the knees, then stands tall for a moment before delivering the pitch. Setting aside his lack of turnout and hinge at the hip, King went about his business on Tuesday with the precision and artistry of a dancer.

Ballerinas value efficiency of movement above all else, and King needed just 89 pitches to complete seven shutout innings, while allowing just five hits, walking absolutely no one, and striking out 12. His performance earned a standing ovation from the Petco Park crowd, which went home happy after the Padres orchestrated a 4-0 win over the Braves in Game 1 of the best-of-three NL Wild Card series.

King stole the show with a well-choreographed approach that has served him well all year, and he executed every step at a high level. And lest we forget, this is King’s first season in a full-time starting role, his first year strategically piecing together his complement of pitches into the rhythm and flow of a start. Knowing that his goals now include facing batters of both handedness multiple times and throwing six or more innings each time out, King has evolved the three-pitch arsenal he debuted with to a five-pitch ensemble that he deploys with specific intent.

King’s primary goal on the mound is to throw four pitches that look exactly the same out of his hand, but fork off horizontally in different directions with distinct amounts of movement at various velocities. His sinker and changeup break roughly 17 inches arm side, but at different speeds (93 mph and 87 mph, respectively) and with the benefit of seam-shifted wake to mess with the hitter’s intuition of where the pitch may be headed. His sweeper and slider move glove side, both around 84 mph, but the sweeper gets 15 inches of movement, while the slider only slides around 4 inches. On top of that, the spin on all four pitches appears similar to the hitter because King mirrors the direction of their spin. The sinker and changeup spin on roughly the same axis as the sweeper and slider, but in the opposite direction. And as it turns out, a shared spin axis is enough to confuse hitters given the infinitesimal amount of time they have to identify a pitch. To add at least one vertical element to the otherwise lateral guessing game, King throws a four-seam fastball with roughly twice as much rise as any of his other pitches to keep the hitter’s eye level from remaining stationary. His command of the four-seamer allows him to pas de bourrée around the upper half and shadow regions of the zone, rarely ever stumbling over the heart of the plate.

But it’s not just about what pitches King throws; the sequencing, context, and execution matter as well. Any good ballet instructor will tell you, if you practice a unilateral movement on the right side, you need to practice it on the left as well. I’m not suggesting pitchers need to be ambidextrous, but rather that starting pitchers need an approach that works for both right-handed and left-handed hitters. Or in King’s case, a modified approach for each handedness. Atlanta’s righty batters primarily saw sinkers (37%), with a healthy dose of sweepers (23%), four-seamers (23%), and sliders (14%). Lefties, meanwhile, got a 37% helping of changeups to go with smaller portions of sinkers (26%), sweepers (16%), and four-seamers (16%). Pumping changeups to lefty batters keeps them off the sinker, a pitch prone to platoon vulnerabilities, by showcasing similar movement at a speed that disrupts their timing.

The final component of King’s transformation from reliever to starter was improving his efficiency by learning to target different outcomes, “It’s really just finding the soft contact. That’s been a huge thing of mine that I had to learn how to even scout for. As a reliever, I just wanted to go for swing-and-miss.” King recently told reporters. “Obviously, as a starter, you want to be able to provide length to the team, and if you go out and go after swing-and-miss every pitch, you’re never going to go deep into games.”

King threw fewer than 20 pitches in each of his seven innings, and needed just nine pitches to get through each of his final two frames. And though he amassed 12 strikeouts, four were on just three pitches and none required more than five pitches. Otherwise, he successfully induced soft contact, giving up an average exit velocity of 87.5 mph across 14 balls in play. The hardest hits of the night were a Michael Harris II single in the third inning at 104.1 mph and a Travis d’Arnaud double in the fourth at 102.5 mph. And far from looking shaky the third time through the order, King had Atlanta’s hitters doing an unintelligible interpretive dance in the box as they flailed at sweepers out of the zone or rolled over a sinker as it fell off the table.

Though King did put on a masterful show, the Braves offense as constituted in 2024 skews more boom or bust than in years past, and the lineup’s most reliable spark plug enters the postseason in something of a slump, at least by his own standards. Marcell Ozuna posted a 117 wRC+ in September, compared to his 154 mark on the season.

Meanwhile, Ozzie Albies, normally a switch-hitter, has been batting exclusively from the right side since returning less than two weeks ago from an IL stint for a fractured left wrist. Though Albies went 3-for-7 with a double and a home run in the doubleheader against the Mets on Monday, he struck out swinging all three times he faced the right-handed King from the right side of the plate. First, Albies looked baffled by sweepers breaking away from him and finishing on the outer half of the plate; then he was fooled by a sinker to a similar location.

An offense that ranks ninth in the league in strikeout rate and doesn’t walk a ton, but rates first in hard-hit rate, is heavily dependent on doing damage once or twice a game to score runs, which makes for a tough matchup against a pitcher that specializes in limiting damage — particularly if the offense isn’t operating at its best. Knowing what his team was up against, Atlanta manager Brian Snitker had to prepare to duel King and the San Diego bullpen.

If you’ve ever watched an action movie, you’ve probably noticed that the fight scenes are as carefully choreographed as any ballet. But rather than a one-on-one face-off between King and each Braves batter, the Padres would also need to bob and weave as multiple Atlanta pitchers cycled through. And this was because Chris Sale, who was scratched from Game 2 of Monday’s doubleheader versus the Mets due to back spasms, was left off the Wild Card roster and did not travel with the team to the west coast. Snitker’s other top starting options also pitched over the weekend, leaving him to choose from a trio of Triple-A arms, bolstered by bullpen contingency plans. AJ Smith-Shawver won out over Ian Anderson and Bryce Elder. When asked about the decision postgame, Snitker said, “We don’t know [with] any of those guys what we’re going to get when we start them.”

The uncertainty around the starter meant Snitker had to come prepared to bring in reinforcements. The top bullpen options had also been used extensively over the last several days, meaning some strategic footwork would be necessary to side step the weaknesses of the second-line relievers. Snitker played the matchups admirably. Once Smith-Shawver got into trouble for a second consecutive inning as a result of poor changeup command that allowed hitters to sit fastball, he went to the left-handed Aaron Bummer. As a unit, the Padres own a 96 wRC+ against lefty pitching (compared to a 116 wRC+ against righties). But specifically, Snitker sent Bummer out to face the part of San Diego’s lineup with the most dramatic platoon splits — Luis Arraez, Fernando Tatis Jr., Jackson Merrill, Xander Bogaerts, and Jake Cronenworth — as well as Jurickson Profar and Manny Machado, who are roughly neutral but sit, unavoidably, in the middle of the lineup; the manager then pulled Bummer before getting to the one hitter in the Padres lineup who handles lefties particularly well, Donovan Solano.

Next up in the action sequence was 41-year-old righty Jesse Chavez. He isn’t overpowering, but he throws a cutter with a distinct movement profile, limits hard contact, and posts better strikeout and walk numbers against righties than lefties, making him better suited to face Solano and Kyle Higashioka. He survived against righty killers Arraez and Tatis Jr. before the lineup cycled back to more neutral matchups in Profar and Machado. Then Luke Jackson entered the fray and pitched a clean inning before getting punished for hanging a curveball to Higashioka, who added an insurance run for San Diego with one swing.

Following Tuesday’s loss, Snitker took solace in the fact that the backend of his bullpen got a day off and will return to the ballpark on Wednesday for Game 2 of the series, refreshed and ready to tango behind Max Fried, who will be squaring off against San Diego righty Joe Musgrove.

But as for Game 1, center stage belonged to Michael King.