Good morning from Philadelphia,
The Padres could not make another Jose Iglesias groundball stand up as the game-winning out.
Imagine that.
On more days than should rightfully be expected, the Padres have won a game like yesterday’s.
But it just can’t be shocking when they lose such a game. Not after wasting so many opportunities to score.
Saying the Padres were 0-for-13 with runners in spring position does not properly convey their failure.
Six of those at-bats came with less than two outs, meaning they had multiple chances for a hit to drive in a run. Or even for productive outs to help.
Among the three times in which they didn’t score after having runners on second and/or third base with less than two outs was the second inning after Xander Bogaerts’ lead-off double and the sixth when they had runners at second and third with one out.
They had the bases loaded with one out in the seventh and scored only when Iglesias hit a grounder to shortstop and beat out the attempt at a double play.
It was Iglesias’ third tie-breaking grounder in the sixth inning or later in the past seven games. The first two were game-deciding RBIs in one-run victories.
The Padres were on the verge of another one-run victory of the season when Robert Suarez allowed two runs in the ninth inning with help from a cramp in Bogaerts’ left quad and what should have been ruled an error by Tyler Wade.
That is all explained in my game story (here) from the 3-2 loss.
What is practically inexplicable is how this keeps happening.
Yesterday was the 11th time in their past 45 games the Padres had between 10 and 14 at-bats with runners in scoring position and the seventh time they have lost one of those games. They are batting .202 with runners in scoring position in that span, which is second-worst in the major leagues.
During their first 38 games, the Padres won seven of the eight times they had between 10 and 14 at-bats with runners in scoring position.
They are not hitting as well overall during their past 45 games as they were during those first 38. Moreover, they are not hitting when it matters.
They solved that problem Saturday, a game in which they went 1-for-8 with runners in scoring position, by hitting three home runs.
Their only homer yesterday was a solo shot by Bogaerts in the fourth inning.
While pretty much everything about Manny Machado’s demeanor said he was frustrated, here is what he said after the game:
“There’s no frustration. They won. It is what it is. They scored one more run than us. Simple. Nothing to it. Nothing to look at. There’s nothing to worry about. Just keep playing baseball. … There’s nothing to be frustrated about. Can we have scored more runs? Yeah, absolutely. It’s a game of baseball. Sometimes you score, sometimes you don’t.I think we had great at-bats. We hit the ball hard right at guys. I mean, there’s not much we can do. Yeah, did we leave people on base? Yeah. I mean, that’s part of it. Are we disappointed? Yeah, we’re disappointed that we lost. But it was a hard-fought game.
“Bogey had a hell of a game today, hitting-wise. We did our things offensively. You know, Iggy beating out a ground ball to score a run. Sometimes you can’t ask for that home run. Doesn’t come out all the time. I mean you score runs like on an infield fielder’s choice. So, you know, go back out here tomorrow and continue to play our game.”
The Padres are 45-38, a game out of the final National League wild-card spot with 79 games remaining.
There is a lot of time for it to get better. Or worse. Ot to stay the same.
The people leading the team’s baseball operations department are trying to work a trade for a right-handed hitter to help the offense.
What Machado said at the end about playing their game is what those in uniform continue to have to believe will eventually result in their scoring more runs and winning more games.
It did at the end of last season. It did at the beginning of this season.
The thing about going 0-for-13 with runners in scoring position is that it means a team had a lot of baserunners.
The Padres had eight hits and walked six times yesterday. They are hitting far better over their past 18 games than they were over the 27 that came before it.
But what remains pretty much a constant in the entire 45-game stretch is that they don’t hit many home runs and don’t get nearly enough hits in the clutch.
”We’re trying,” Jackson Merrill said. “Not every day is a good day. I feel like on our bad days, we’re literally just missing stuff the whole game. I feel like, personally, I took a lot of good swings today. I feel like everybody else took a lot of good swings. We got a lot of hits. We just didn’t score a lot. … We feel good about where our swings are at.”
Here is a look at how Padres players have fared with runners in scoring position over the past 45 games.
Suarez slippage
Suarez’s 23 saves are tied with the Astros’ Josh Hader for most in the major leagues.
But Suarez’s recent troubles continued yesterday when he allowed two runs in the ninth inning and blew his third save of the season.
Wade not catching a tough-but-playable floater at the start didn’t help, but Suarez continued to fall behind and throw too many pitches down the middle.
Remember when we lamented last season that all Suarez threw was fastballs. Well, he throws his changeup more than a quarter of the time now and opponents are batting .361 (13-for-36) against it. The Reds’ first hit and their walk-off hit came on changeups in the heart of the strike zone.
Suarez has in his past seven appearances, lost three games, blown a save, saved two games and had just three scoreless outings while yielding a total of nine runs in 4⅓ innings.
Opponents are batting .500 (12-for-24) against him in that span, including going 7-for-9 against his changeup. But his fastball is not putting people away as frequently and is too often not going in the strike zone or getting misses out of the zone.
This skid comes after Suarez allowed one run in 17 ⅔ innings while converting his first 15 saves opportunities. Then, after a four-walk, five-run meltdown on May 12, he allowed only an unearned run over his 11 games (12⅓ innings), during which he converted six of seven saves and won a game.
Here is a look at his past five games:
Sliding over
Stephen Kolek did a lot of things right yesterday in a magnificent example of a pitcher in his first year as a starter continuing to learn on the job.
The right-hander kept his pitches down in the zone. He partnered with catcher Elias Díaz to mix those pitches incredibly well. Kolek got through more than five innings setting up certain pitches with the ones he threw before it. He got mostly weak contact, induced nine groundball outs (including his team-leading 13th double play grounder) and struck out five.
Kolek was charged with a run that scored after he departed. In the sixth, he gave up his second and third singles of the game and was replaced by Adrian Morejón with runners at first and second and two down. Morejón allowed an RBI single before ending the inning,
“I thought execution-wise today, it was about as good as I’ve been all year,” Kolek said. “So even though stuff was probably a tick down, just trying not to overdo it while I was out there, but just really focusing on the execution part.”
Kolek also made one adjustment a few days earlier that showed up yesterday against left-handed batters, who had hit .297 against him in his first 10 starts.
Kolek moved over from having his heel at the middle of the rubber to placing it at the far left edge of the rubber when facing left-handed batters. (He would move back to the right side against right-handed batters.)
The move changed his angle and allowed him to get inside more effectively against the Reds who batted from the left side. Those batters were 1-for-9 yesterday.
“That’s been a big problem for me lately,” Kolek said of effectively getting inside against lefties. “So I tried to do one thing that maybe makes it a little bit easier. And I thought it worked well today.”
Kolek, who has a 3.73 ERA, has completed at least five innings in nine of his 11 starts. Yesterday was the sixth time in 11 starts he has made it through at least 5 2/3 innings. That is one fewer time than Dylan Cease and once more than Randy Vásquez while making six fewer starts than either of them.
Tough task
Martín Maldonado will get the honors behind the plate tonight catching Matt Waldron’s season debut.
He caught the knuckleballer in spring training.
“It’s a fun challenge,” Maldonado said.
I wrote about Waldron’s expected call-up (here) before yesterday’s game.
Tidbits
- Fernando Tatis Jr. was 1-for-3 with two walks yesterday and is batting .119 (5-for-42) over his past 12 games. This skid comes on the heels of a 10-for-17 surge and has left him with a .207/.311/.352 line over his past 50 games. That is his lowest batting average over any 50-game stretch in his career — but just barely lower than the .209 he hit from July 17 through Sept. 11, 2023. He has hit seven home runs in his past 50 games, which is three more than he hit in his worst 50-game stretch, from July 3 to Aug. 30, 2023.
- Tatis stole his 17th base of the season. He has stolen nine bases while hitting two home runs over his past 29 games.
- Bogaerts was 3-for-4 with two doubles and a home run. It was his seventh three-hit game of the season and fourth in his past 17 games. It was his first game this season (and ninth in his career) with three extra-base hits. Bogaerts had 13 extra-base hits through his first 68 games this season. He has nine extra-base hits in his past 13 games.
- There are 106 major league players with at least 2,500 plate appearances since 2019. Luis Arraez strikes out less frequently than all of them, homers less frequently than all of them and walks less frequently than all but 16 of them. Yet, on Saturday he homered and struck out. And yesterday, he walked twice.
- Gavin Sheets was 2-for-4 with a walk yesterday. Both hits came against left-hander Nick Lodolo. Sheets, who had two hits against left-hander Andrew Abbott on Saturday, has nine hits in his past 24 at-bats against lefties. His .243 average against left-handers this season is 75 points higher than it was in his first four MLB seasons (2021 to ‘24).
- Machado was 0-for-4 and is batting .129 (4-for-31) over the past eight games.
- The loss dropped the Padres to 4-4 when wearing their brown tops. It’s not the jersey’s fault they can’t hit with runners in scoring position.
All right, that’s it for me.
Talk to you tomorrow.