The San Diego Padres are riding a seven-game winning streak at the most crucial part of the regular season with their postseason lives affected seemingly each game.

The Friars have a 2.5-game advantage over the Arizona Diamondbacks for the final wild-card spot in the National League and are 1.5 games back from the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs for a more ideal postseason placement.

Given the critical nature of postseason, weaker areas that were able to be ignored during the regular season are suddenly magnified come October. For San Diego, all eyes will shift to the starting rotation and their inconsistency for most of the regular season.

It is no secret that starting pitchers get a much shorter leash in the playoffs due to the caliber of hitters getting a better read after multiple at-bats, but Mason Miller, the leader of the Padres bullpen, perhaps best encapsulates the exact work cut out for he the other relief pitchers starting in the wild-card round.

Not only do the Padres have the third-fewest innings pitched per games started (4.6 innings) by their starters, but Mason Miller's 63.1 innings pitched is eerily close to hitting his career-high innings mark of 65 set in 2024 as a member of the then-Oakland Athletics.

Unsurprisingly, there was no postseason play for his team that year.

When asked about his concern level going into a hopefully deep postseason run having just thrown his most innings pitched in the regular season, Miller told MLB.com's Adrian Garro that the concern simply isn't there.

“No concern,” Miller said. “I mean, until it becomes a concern, it's not a concern. So we're going to keep preparing and keep doing everything we need to to be ready to go tomorrow, just keep riding this train.”

As for pitching concern, there appears to be some from manager Craig Stammen surrounding his confidence level with the starting rotation.

"The current staff that we have, we’re going to manage it the same way that we would a lot of playoff games," he said. "You know, where we’re going to be probably aggressive with taking the starter out of the game and using our bullpen that we feel is a strength of our team.”

The Padres bullpen have the second-lowest ERA in baseball with a 3.18 mark and the second-highest amount of innings pitched with 593.2 frames. San Diego's elite bullpen will once again be put to the test come October, but this time, when the lights shine brightest.

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