“Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.”
— “The Old Man and the Sea,” by Ernest Hemingway

SAN FRANCISCO — The first inning of Michael King’s first start for the San Diego Padres on March 31 saw his offense score five runs with the help of an error, a passed ball and a Luis Campusano homer with, according to Statcast, an expected batting average of .110. The Padres routed the San Francisco Giants by nine runs despite King, who battled his mechanics and issued a career-high seven walks.

The first inning of King’s second start for the Padres on Saturday saw San Diego leadoff man Xander Bogaerts single on a wind-blown fly ball with an expected batting average of .010. Five batters later, Jurickson Profar sent a towering, two-out drive toward Oracle Park’s right-field arcade. The result: a home run with the highest launch angle of any in Profar’s career, the Padres’ third-ever grand slam in this bayside ballpark and their first here since Yasmani Grandal homered twice on Sept. 25, 2014.

The Slam Diego Padres have arrived in San Francisco. pic.twitter.com/UzqDW8njBz

— San Diego Padres (@Padres) April 7, 2024

Unlike last weekend at Petco Park, this time the Giants stayed within slam range the rest of the way. And this time, the Padres won 4-0 in large part because of King, who allowed four singles and only one walk while logging a career-best seven scoreless innings.

“That’s who Michael King is,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said. “Michael King’s gonna compete his tail off. He’s gonna have a lot of different pitches in his arsenal. He’s gonna have a lot of movement. He’s gonna work ahead, control counts and do a nice job, (which) he did tonight.”

What King did in that first start was not what anyone expected. The right-hander needed 88 pitches to navigate four innings. Only 47 pitches of those were strikes. King was fortunate he didn’t surrender a run before his final inning. He also was fortunate that the Padres had given him a 12-0 lead.

Such an advantage might have seemed conducive to attacking the strike zone. King tried. But his delivery includes some cross-body action, which can be difficult to calibrate. “I was thinking about three different things every different inning to see if it was fixing it,” King said. He did not focus on what was, for him, a familiar adjustment. So, earlier this week, he made it: He resolved that, as he worked down the mound Saturday, he would concentrate on seeing his catcher, Campusano, just above his left elbow.

“I’ve always been a command pitcher,” King said. “So (last weekend’s start) was a little uncharacteristic, and then I think that me just seeing my sights, really focusing on it helped me to actually command the zone.”

King wound up throwing 61 strikes among 94 pitches on Saturday. Both tallies were the second-highest of his career. He did not face a three-ball count until the bottom of the fifth. He did not issue a walk until two outs in the bottom of the seventh. He responded by striking out San Francisco’s Tom Murphy on four pitches.

It was a preview, the Padres hope, of much more of the same.

“He knows himself better than all of us,” Campusano said. “He was electric. And I think the run support helped him a lot.”

“I had a bunch of conversations with different people, (pitching coach Ruben Niebla) obviously being the main one, and that was more of him learning me,” King said of his mid-week adjustment. “He was talking about different things with my mechanics, but for me, that’s always been a point of emphasis in terms of just getting back on track. And I told him I’d rather just focus on this and see if that fixes everything else, which it did.”

King joined the Padres in December in what could become one of the more consequential trades in recent major-league history. San Diego reluctantly surrendered Juan Soto, perhaps the best hitter of his generation, and center fielder Trent Grisham. The five-player return from the New York Yankees was headlined by King, who thrived last summer after switching from relieving to starting.

On March 13, the Padres flipped one of the pitchers in the Soto trade, prospect Drew Thorpe, as part of the price for Chicago White Sox starter Dylan Cease. Much of San Diego’s hopes of contending without Soto — one of multiple significant subtractions from last year’s $255 million roster — now rest on a reshaped rotation.

The past week has brought some of that plan to fruition. Tuesday, Yu Darvish delivered the Padres’ first quality start of the season. Wednesday, Joe Musgrove provided one of his own. In Thursday’s series opener here, Cease made it three consecutive quality starts. Then, King executed a quick and successful adjustment.

The Padres anticipated such a string of pitching performances, especially after the acquisition of Cease. “And that expectation was rewarded,” Shildt said late Saturday. “They’re throwing the ball very, very well and giving us more than a chance to win.”

Yet the Padres (5-6) lost two of those four games. They totaled just 11 runs of offense in that span. Saturday, Giants starter Keaton Winn recovered from a relatively unlucky top of the first — “I know I hit it good,” Profar said of the trajectory of the grand-slam ball off his bat, “but with the wind here, you never know” — to hold San Diego hitless over the final five innings. Campusano singled in the seventh to end the drought. He was promptly stranded.

The Padres likely will need external reinforcements to keep their offense from sinking another season. They certainly will need Manny Machado (.673 OPS) and Ha-Seong Kim (.623 OPS) to start supplying production closer to their historical norms. “We’ll get it,” Shildt said.

And, just as important, they will need more of the precision they saw Saturday from a pitcher they are still learning about. When asked if he felt he had thrown one of the best games of his career, King did not exactly echo Campusano’s assessment.

“Yes and no,” said King, who finished with four strikeouts, well shy of his career high (13). “I felt like I was very efficient in the zone, getting soft contact early in the count, which is obviously a huge thing as a starter. But I didn’t feel like I had electric stuff today. And I know I felt that in the past, so hopefully I can have a seven-plus (inning) shutout with some more electric stuff.”

(Photo: Darren Yamashita / USA Today)