King has milestone day as Padres get series win vs. Rangers

ARLINGTON — As an established reliever with a chance to become a stalwart starter, in his first season with a new team, Padres righty Michael King knew this season could potentially alter his career trajectory. Barely more than halfway through, he’s still reaching new heights.

In the Padres’ 3-1 win over the Rangers on Thursday at Globe Life Field, King passed some meaningful personal milestones, establishing a career high in innings pitched and wins in a single season. King threw 5 1/3 innings, giving him 105 innings pitched this season.

The last out he recorded pushed him there, and now he has one out more than the 104 2/3 innings he pitched last season for the Yankees, who gave him a chance to be a starter in August. King’s final eight appearances in Yankee pinstripes were starts before he was dealt to San Diego in the blockbuster Juan Soto trade in December. The Padres have given him 18 consecutive starts after one early relief appearance in his sixth MLB season.

“This year, coming into this year, was going to be a year that I really tried to learn as much as I can about starting pitching,” said King, who was primarily a starter at Boston College and throughout the Yankees’ farm system. “I’ve always thought of myself as a starter and I’ve almost proved to myself that I can go that many innings and be a full-time workhorse … but there are a lot of things that I need to do right to be able to go 180 innings, go 200 innings.”

King said he’s been talking to Joe Musgrove and Yu Darvish, both veteran starters for San Diego, to understand how to become a pitcher who gets his innings in every time, regardless of how effective he is at the beginning.

“Guys that I really look up to … [they may not] have good stuff that day, but they can still put together a quality start,” King said. “So it’s still a thing that I’m working on, but it’s also a ton of conversations with both of them and [pitching coach] Ruben [Niebla] and making sure that I can progress.”

King dominated the Rangers until he faltered with one out in the sixth. King surrendered a double and a walk before he was pulled for reliever Jeremiah Estrada, who yielded an RBI single that was charged to King but maintained the Padres’ lead.

“I wish I had two-thirds of an inning more than I did today — I wanted to finish that sixth,” said King, who struck out five.

King said he tried too hard to get the Rangers to chase on two-strike counts when he should’ve been trying to induce soft contact. Just another lesson learned for a workhorse in the making.

After King left, Estrada limited damage over the next 1 2/3 innings, and Adrian Morejon pitched a scoreless eighth before Robert Suarez closed out the win with his 22nd save in 23 opportunities this season.

The Padres’ bullpen wrapped up a magnificent road trip. They entered the day with the lowest ERA in the Majors (0.86) during the first five games of the trip and lowered that mark to 0.73 with their 3 2/3 scoreless innings.

“The bullpen, of course, did their part,” manager Mike Shildt said. “They were fantastic again. Estrada picked up Michael in the sixth [and had] a clean seventh, [then] Morejon was sharp again. And Suarez brought it home. The bullpen was tremendous.”

The Padres are enjoying their most productive stretch of the season thus far. They have won 11 of their past 14 games and won four consecutive series. In eight rubber games, the Padres are 7-1 this season.

Relatively modest run support from the Padres’ offense was enough for King given his performance. San Diego has scored 10 or more runs in King’s starts four times already this season — but he didn’t need that much help Thursday.

“He’s definitely getting the opportunity,” Shildt. “A big acquisition for us in the offseason … it’s a great opportunity that he’s more than seizing to take the next steps in his career. We clearly evaluate and expect him to be a guy that not only is going to be a starter for us, but he’s going to be a guy that’s going to help us at the front end [of the rotation]. He’s done exactly that.”