Evaluating Michael King’s 2026 season and his future with Padres
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Just a day after the Milwaukee Brewers claimed victory over the Tampa Bay Rays in the 2026 Fall Classic, Michael King declined his player option with the San Diego Padres and will now be a free agent.
King’s history with the Padres is short but notable. He returned to the club after briefly testing free agency ahead of the 2026 season. His player-friendly, 3-year, $75 million contract includes multiple opt-outs, giving him near-unprecedented autonomy.
With that said and done, he may not continue his career with the Friars in 2027. However, while with the Padres, he did plenty on the mound.
Since converting him into a starter after acquiring him in the second Juan Soto trade in 2024, the former Yankee has been a gift that’s kept on giving. Sure, King’s 2025 season was largely stunted by injury; however, the Padres finally got to see what another healthy season from him looks like. To no one’s surprise, it was amazing.
King finished the 2026 regular season with a 4.6 bWAR, tossing 185 frames to the tune of a 3.21 ERA. With Nick Pivetta out for most of the campaign, King stepped up and became the ace the Padres desperately needed amid a slough of pitching troubles. While it was a slight detour from his fantastic 2024 campaign, it was definitely a bright spot in the Padres rotation.
King posted 18 quality starts in 32 games. For perspective, the remaining Padres starters combined for 20.
Let’s go a little further with this. Among all Padres 2026 starters, excluding Pivetta, King leads in WHIP, opponent average, strikeouts, ERA, and lowest BABIP. Let’s go even further … Michael King’s 2026 season ranks among the Padres’ franchise top 50 single-season records in bWAR, ERA, and strikeouts per nine.
Eight strikeouts for Michael King 🔥
He's through seven shutout innings! pic.twitter.com/KqUO5miIq7
— MLB (@MLB) September 30, 2026
For many, it’s obvious King was a generational player for the Padres, but seeing it laid out really puts things in perspective. Cy Young finalists and runners-up haven’t been announced. However, it would be no surprise if King’s name appeared on that list. He previously finished seventh in Cy Young voting in 2024.
San Diego Union Tribune’s Kevin Acee shared an article on the “pitching chaos” strategy the Padres used this year to launch themselves into a wild-card spot. Ironically, King and Walker Buehler were the only two “traditional starters” left out of those plans -a testament to King’s enduring prowess.
However, not everything went according to plan for King.
It felt like strikeouts became a commodity for Padres pitching this year. In fact, they finished in the bottom 10 in strikeouts. While King led his peers in strikeouts, it’s a noticeable drop-off from his 2024 campaign. Additionally, it’s only slightly better than 2023, when he pitched 80 fewer innings.
This is interesting considering that, compared to 2024, King utilized his signature pitches the same way. King has a five-pitch mix consisting of a sinker, changeup, four-seamer, sweeper, and a slider. Rather than relying on the heater, the sinker is his signature fastball, which he usually sequences with a changeup. Those pitches have shifted in 2026, but in ways some wouldn’t have expected.
The movement on his changeup used to fool batters around the league. However, in 2026, it seems to have lost its nerve. The spin rate on his changeup gradually fell over the past two years and is now garnering significantly less chase and whiff. Additionally, his sinker became a liability, especially against righties in 2026. Compared to his changeup, his sinker really hasn’t changed over the past two years; in fact, he’s actually been throwing it harder than before on average. The only thing that shifted is its location.
In 2024, he located the pitch down and away. Two years later, he’s locating it in the complete opposite direction. Not a single other pitch in his arsenal has shifted location this dramatically. This might explain why his sinker was his most misplaced pitch. Righties and lefties mashed it equally in 2026, leading to a career-high 20 homers allowed. Ten of those would-be homers were sinkers.
While all of this might be cause for alarm, there’s plenty of evidence to explain some of King’s shifting playstyle.
King himself mentioned before that he had been batting all year with mechanics.
As stated earlier, King missed a large portion of 2025 due to a rare long thoracic nerve injury in his shoulder and a separate injury to his knee. This prompted him to get in the lab with Ruben Niebla and shift around things like his arm angle and his stride. The point of these adjustments was not to prioritize velocity or stuff but health and physical longevity.
We can likely credit King’s healthy season to these mechanical optimizations. If such is the case, perhaps a slight decrease in metrics is worth having him around longer. In any case, it’s not like the numbers were very far off anyway.
Michal King had a career high in innings pitched and games started. Batters hit and slugged the same against him this year as they did in 2024.
There shouldn’t really be a reality where Michael King doesn’t continue his career as a Padre. Of the recent debates on King’s contract, 35 AAV seems to be the sweet spot for the New York native. If new Padres ownership wants to make a statement in the offseason, this wouldn’t be a bad place to start.
