Good morning,
The Rockies, a bad team that is playing well lately, effectively kept trying to give last night’s game away.
The Padres would not take the charity.
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“We were there,” Jackson Merrill said. “We were right there on the edge. Sometimes it just happens where you don’t get any luck going.”
However much credit should be given to the Padres for drawing/taking 11 walks, they did hardly anything with them. Only one of the batters who walked ended up scoring.
That’s how they became the 38th MLB team (out of 197) since 2000 to get exactly 11 walks in a game and lose.
You can read in my game story (here) about how the Padres’ 5-4 loss went down.
Too much, too often
Teams that get 11 walks in a game win eight out of 10 times. But teams whose starting pitcher allows at least five runs lose slightly more than 8½ out of 10 times.
So there you have it.
Padres starter Randy Vasquez allowed five runs in 3⅔ innings last night.
The Padres have lost seven of the nine games in which their starting pitcher has surrendered five or more runs and 13 of the 16 games in which their starter has allowed four or more. (Vasquez, who was filling in for the injured Joe Musgrove, has allowed at least four runs in three of his four starts.)
“As far as starting pitching goes,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said, “we’ve been in a pretty good spot, which is why we’ve won a fair amount of games lately.”
Indeed. The Padres were coming off a four-game stretch in which their starters allowed two runs over 26⅓ innings. The Padres were 3-1 in those games. They have 17 quality starts this season (tied for 10th most) and are 14-3 in those games.
But they also have a penchant for putting the offense in a situation where it has to — as Shildt characterized it last night — fight “like hell” to come back.
Just three teams have had a starter allow at least four runs in more games this season. Padres starters have a 6.09 ERA in losses and a 2.30 ERA in wins, a 3.79 disparity that is tied for 10th highest in the majors.
Big guys, big play
Merrill made a number of fine plays running down balls in center field last night.
However, he was waylaid on his way to making one significant play.
What turned out to be the deciding run scored on a ball that Merrill appeared to have a bead on as he sprinted in before pulling up when he spied a charging Fernando Tatis Jr. coming in from his left.
But Tatis also pulled up an instant later, and the pop-up by Ezequiel Tovar fell between the two. That allowed Charlie Blackmon to score from second base and give then Rockies a 5-1 lead in the fourth inning.
Neither outfielder wanted to throw the other under the bus. And the play happened because neither outfielder wanted to be the bus.
“Two fast guys going full speed and not trying to take out the other guy,” Tatis said.
Neither player called the ball, and Tatis said he lost track of it in the lights and dusk sky.
“You see the best outfielders, (the ball goes) right between them sometimes,” Merrill said. “Sometimes it just gets lost in the light. It’s a tough period, too. It’s the twilight zone at that time of night. The sky is kind of difficult. So picking it up off the bat, it’s kind of hard. It’s a baseball play. It fell down for a hit and that happens sometimes. It might have been the difference in the game, but we’re not worried about it. We’re very confident with how we play the outfield.”
Who knows?
Shildt sometimes seems allergic to publicly being real about his team. That doesn’t mean he is being untruthful or ignoring issues, just that he prefers to keep most constructive critiques in-house.
And we really can’t know whether there was anything to read into his team’s sometimes off-kilter performance last night.
Shildt seemed flummoxed by a question about whether there was any sort of letdown for the Padres after the big weekend against the Dodgers, in which they won two of three against the National League West leaders in front of record-breaking crowds.
“I didn’t,” he said after a long pause. “If you want to make some kind of correlation, (but) I didn’t, no. I mean, I saw a group of guys going out there — we happened to get down, they got some hits, got down 5-1, normal baseball game. Fought our asses off. Competed. Stayed focused, got our walks, couldn’t get a big hit when we needed it. That’s what I saw. There wasn’t any deflation for me. I saw guys getting after it and running around the field and diving and making plays and playing as good a baseball as they can play.”
We cannot always (or even ever) infer deflation or flatness in a team simply by seeing results or what it looks like from the stands or press box or on TV. And the Padres did hit three home runs and a good number of their walks could be considered earned.
But the Rockies have the major leagues’ third-worst record. Their starting pitcher, Dakota Hudson, won his first game in seven decisions while allowing three runs in 5⅔ innings to lower his ERA to 6.13 (from 6.35). The Padres had three hits off Hudson and one against the three relievers that followed. They committed three errors, though none led to runs.
So, yeah, we can wonder.
Still the Manny?
Shildt said this of Manny Machado when asked what he has seen in the slumping slugger of late:
“I would take Manny up there every day.”
It is a little early to entirely disagree with the thought.
A decade of excellence and his recovery from elbow surgery has bought Machado some grace.
But his bases-loaded double play grounder that ended the game completed an 0-for-4 night and ran his hitless streak to 0-for-14 over the past four games. He is 1-for-22 over his past six games and is batting .227/.283/.357 on the season. He has one home run in his past 83 at-bats and five homers this season.
He has grounded into a seven double plays, tied for second most in MLB.
The man being paid an average of $31.8 million per year largely for his ability to come up big in big moments is batting .233 with runners in scoring position and .154 in late-and-close situations.
Speaking last week in Chicago, Machado acknowledged his elbow is not yet 100 percent but that he anticipates it will be at some point in the summer.
“There’s good days and bad days,” he said. “... I’m not even eight months out.”
To be clear, Machado was not making an excuse. He was answering questions.
A guy who hit .282 with an .837 OPS and finished top-five in MVP voting four times from 2013 through ‘22 and grinded through severe pain to hit 30 homers last season merits some patience.
He also warrants some concern that the back of his baseball card might reflect some different numbers going forward.
(baseball-reference; U-T research)
Tidbits
- The Padres have gone 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position in three consecutive games.
- The last time the Padres hit at least three home runs and got just one other hit was Sept. 4, 2015. It has happened just three times in team history.
- The Padres have hit three home runs in back-to-back games, the first time they have hit at least that many in consecutive games since June 22 and 23 of last season.
- Merril had one of the Padres’ three home runs and their fourth hit, a single. He is 10-for-26 with two homers over his past eight games, raising his batting average 22 points (to .291).
- Luis Campusano has walked eight times in his past 68 plate appearances. He walked once in his first 68 plate appearances this season and 12 times in his 266 plate appearances from 2020 to ‘23.
- Xander Bogaerts has homered in the past two games, his first time with homers in sconsecutive games since July 3 and 4 of last season.
- Luis Arraez was 0-for-4, but his third-inning walk extended his on-base streak to 20 games.
- Ha-Seong Kim had not committed an error in 87 chances before committing two throwing errors last night. It was his second two-error game of the season after never having a two-error game in his first three seasons.
- Yuki Matsui committed the Padres’ other error. It was the first time this season they were charged with three errors.
- Last night was Jurickson Profar’s 74th career homer from the left side of the plate. He has 24 from the right side. Jeff Sanders’ pregame notebook (here) had some interesting thoughts from Profar on being a switch-hitter. Also in that notebook is what would seem to be positive news regarding Musgrove.
- The Padres have won four consecutive series, including two in a row against winning teams. But they are now 2-3 against the Rockies this season and 11-13 against teams with a losing record.
Final word
Merrill is a rookie. And a brash one.
It works for him.
You have to wonder if his bravado won’t ebb as he grows beyond his 21 years. You also have to hope it doesn’t.
Here was his take on the Padres’ effort last night:
“I appreciate everybody in this clubhouse. We gave it all we had until the last out. … Dodgers, anybody, we do not give an F. We’ll go after them as hard as we go after anybody. Until the last out is made, we all go hard.”
All right, that’s it for me.
Talk to you tomorrow.
