Good morning,
As the ninth inning began with the Padres trailing the Dodgers 5-2 last night, the video boards at Petco Park showed highlights of the Milwaukee Brewers’ comeback victory over the Cincinnati Reds that occurred earlier in the evening.
There is a week remaining in August, and we’re keeping tabs on what is happening with the team one game up in the wild-card race.
This is going to be an intense six weeks. At least the Padres hope it’s intense for that long.
Yes, the Padres remain in a playoff race, despite the fact they are underperforming in virtually every facet and have squandered every bit of their lead in the National League wild card race. And despite what it feels like.
Their loss to the Dodgers, by that 5-2 score, was their 10th in 12 games.
Here is my game story with some telling quotes from Eric Hosmer and Emilio Pagán regarding the situation the Padres find themselves in, as well as details on the bullpen having to go the distance again and the still-slumping offense.
As one high level Padres executive said Tuesday, this should be seen as disappointing. They do not want better to be good enough.
That said, this is offered as a public service:
(MLB.com; baseball-reference)
This is not the Padres team you signed up for or were told you were getting in 2021. But it is a playoff contender.
Enjoy it while you can.
Ludwick redux?
Adam Frazier has not been the hitter the Padres expected to get.
The NL’s second-leading hitter when he was acquired on Aug. 25 struck out with two runners on to end last night’s game. He was 0-for-3 last night and has gone 9-for-51 (.176) in his past 14 games.
Frazier is batting .233/.274/.278 in 97 plate appearances with the Padres. He was hitting .324/.388/.448 in 428 plate appearances with the Pirates.
“Just probably pressing a little bit,” manager Jayce Tingler said last night. “You really never see him swing and miss or have the punch outs. He’s one of the toughest outs in the league and right now he’s not feeling it.”
Frazier put just two of his nine swings in play last night and has put just six of his past 29 swings (20.6 percent) in play since Friday. Before the past four games, he had put 46.6 percent of his swings in play this season.
His strikeout last night was his fifth in is past 11 at-bats and his 12th in his past 47 at-bats (since Aug. 10). His strikeout rate of one every 9.9 plate appearances through Aug. 9 was third best in the majors.
Because I don’t get to tweet something or post an article and have it disappear into the ether of anonymity, I will remind you that I wrote in the newsletter on the day of the trade that it was difficult to imagine the trade for Frazier turning out like the infamous Ryan Ludwick deal in 2010.
But here we are.
There are 35 games to go. We’ll see.
“We’re going to run him out there tomorrow,” Tingler said. “It just takes one barrel, one at-bat to get it turned around.”
Pen, again
Tingler started Pierce Johnson, who has been used as a sort of fireman working in the sixth, seventh or eighth inning, at the start of last night’s game. Austin Adams, who also most often works anywhere from the sixth to the eighth, replaced him. And Pagán, an eighth-inning staple, came in after that and worked the third and fourth inning.
Then Tingler went to Nabil Crismatt, who generally works multiple innings. But he was lifted for a pinch-hitter when the Padres had runners in scoring position on the bottom of the fifth.
Those are the moves of a manager going all out to win a game.
So it was curious that left-hander Tim Hill wasn’t warming up and lefty Daniel Camarena, called up earlier in the day and making his fourth big-league appearance, was allowed to face left-handed hitting Corey Seager with a runner on in the seventh inning.
Seager doubled, and Camarena was still left in even though Daniel Hudson had warmed in the sixth and was warming again. Manny Machado dove to stop a grounder down the line to limit right-handed hitting Chris Taylor to an infield single and prevent one or two runs from scoring.
That’s when Hudson was brought in. He promptly gave up a two-run single to right-hand hitter AJ Pollock.
“We didn’t have a lot of guys left,” Tingler explained of the decision to try to get more from Camarena.
It is virtually always tricky questioning a manager’s bullpen usage, since he is the one privy to which relievers are available and has far more information about any given matchup than the rest of us possess.
But every reliever was rested last night due to the Padres being off Monday, and Hill ended up pitching in the ninth.
Presumably — and again, it is dangerous to assume — Hill could have finished off the seventh while Hudson went in the eighth. Had the Padres tied or taken the lead, Mark Melancon could have pitched the ninth. That also would have left Reiss Knehr and Craig Stammen for potential extra innings.
Regardless, this was another strong showing by the bullpen against a team with the National League’s third-highest OPS (.775) over the past two months.
It was especially so given the fact Padres relievers have thrown the second-most innings of any bullpen this season and have covered 52 of 70 1/3 innings in the past eight games.
Last night was the sixth time in 20 games this month the Padres put the entirety of a game on their relievers. Those games have been necessitated by injuries to Yu Darvish, Chris Paddack and Jake Arrieta. The Padres won the first three bullpen games and have lost the past three.
Tuesday was the third bullpen game in eight days and fourth in eight games.
The relievers gave the Padres a chance to win.
Will Smith’s homer off Pierce Johnson in the second inning last night accounted for the ninth time in 12 games the Padres’ opponent scored first. But the lead did not quickly grow, as it frequently has. The Padres trailed by at least three runs by the third inning in seven of their previous 11 games. They weren’t down by that many last night until that seventh inning, when the Dodgers took a 3-0 lead.
To that point, the Padres had one hit. They finished with three.
Coming back is something the Padres used to do with abandon. Not really so much anymore.
They came back from a 3-0 deficit in the first inning on May 10 — 13 games ago. They won Saturday’s game against the Phillies in the 10th inning after trailing until the final out of the ninth, the first time since July 8 they scored the winning run after the seventh inning in a comeback victory.
Tidbits
- Machado had a two-run homer taken away from him by AJ Pollock in the fourth inning and finished 0-for-3 with a walk. He is batting .213 (17-for-80) with a .560 OPS in August after leading the NL in batting average (.368, tied with Atlanta’s Freddie Freeman) and OPS (1.139) over his previous 38 games.
- Fernando Tatis Jr. was also 0-for-3 with a walk and is 3-for-25 in his past seven games.
- Tatis had gone a season-high 14 games without a stolen base before swiping second in the eighth inning last night. His 24 stolen bases are second in the NL to Trea Turner, who stole third base in the top of the eighth last night.
- Smith’s home run was just the second run Johnson has allowed in 16 games (15 2/3 innings). Both have come on solo homers.
- Eric Hosmer was 1-for-3 with a double last night. His .324 batting average and .407 on-base percentage over his past 46 games (since June 29) lead the Padres in that span.
- Wil Myers was 1-for-2 with two walks, raising his season OBP to .343. His OBP dipped to a season-low .313 on July 4, but it is .399 over his past 143 plate appearances.
- Jurickson Profar’s two-run homer in the eighth inning accounted for the Padres’ only run last night. He also drew an 11-pitch walk in the ninth inning to bring up Frazier. Profar, who returned from the COVID IL on Friday, has raised his season batting average 32 points (to .241), his OBP 30 points (to .346) and his OPS 101 points (to .682) over the past two months. He has just 74 plate appearances in that stretch.
This is new
I raised two boys. (OK, my wife raised two boys.)
So I remember years of regularly coming home to broken stuff and/or the smell of smoke and/or punches to my nether region.
Now I have a daughter-in-law and a granddaughter. So this is the kind of thing I find on the driveway when I come home now:
I’m pretty sure my precious Evie, who is 14 months old, is the one who drew the flowers. And her penmanship is stunning. The scribbles were obviously done by my son’s wife.
By the way, thanks Padres. Evie and I had to cut short an adventure finding pinecones and leaves and bugs when Larry Rothschild’s dismissal was announced on Monday.
OK, that’s it for me.
Talk to you tomorrow.
"danger" - Google News
August 25, 2021 at 08:30PM
https://ift.tt/3muyBIj
Padres Daily: Still a contender; Frazier in danger of being a repeat; sharp pen - The San Diego Union-Tribune
"danger" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3bVUlF0
https://ift.tt/3f9EULr
No comments:
Post a Comment