Good morning from Phoenix,
Mike Shildt spoke accurately. His point had merit.
But winners don’t have to muse about what almost was.
“Let’s talk about the top of the third,” Shildt said after last night’s 5-1 loss to the Diamondbacks.
He went on to describe a sequence in which Fernando Tatis Jr. working a lead-off walk before Luis Arraez hit a ball 99 mph off the bat that second baseman Ketel Marte grabbed on a short-hop and threw to second base to start a double play and Manny Machado and Jackson Merrill followed with singles before Gavin Sheets hit a 405-foot fly ball to dead center field that was caught in front of the wall.
“It’s like, OK, a fair question,” Shildt said. “It’s a zero. … But that’s an inning that you look at it objectively, and you go, ‘What else do you want to have accomplished in that inning?’ You have a guy not chasing out the zone. The next guy gets a pitch he can square up. Another guy squares it up, next guy squared it up, next guy squared it up, and you got a zero. That’s one of those things that, at least I look at when you start talking about the offense — the quality of at-bats. That’s why this game is such a challenge, because you can have a lot of quality at-bats and still not have anything to show for it. So I thought the at-bat quality was actually good tonight.”
For five innings, it was.
At that point, the Padres were down 2-1. That the Diamondbacks scored three runs off Stephen Kolek in the bottom of the fifth hardly mattered, however, because the Padres’ only baserunner over the final four innings came when Merrill walked leading off the sixth.
You can read in my game story (here) about what happened and how unproductive the Padres’ offense has been for the better part of the past month.
The Padres are 11-9 since May 23. That is the day they stopped a six-game losing streak. So that means they have lost 15 of their past 26 games.
And in those 26 games, they have had the worst offense in the major leagues.
Let’s attempt to draw a little more water from a stone as we once again dissect the Padres’ anemic offense.
One fact of the matter is they are not getting to opposing bullpens as quickly as they were early in the season, and they are not bullying those relief pitchers when they do face them.
In the past 26 games, the Padres have had an opposing starter go at least six innings 14 times. It happened nine times in the season’s first 26 games.
In the past 26 games, the Padres have hit .196 against relief pitchers. They hit .231 against relievers in the season’s first 26 games.
“I think the biggest thing for us is when they do get to that bullpen, this is where we need to take advantage and continue to do what we do those first four to five innings,” Jake Cronenworth said. “We’re having good at-bats. It’s just when we get that starter out of the game, it’s continuing to have those through the night. Early in the year, we’d get that starter out in the fourth and we’d kill teams’ bullpens. I think it’s getting back to that. Not that guys have changed or whatever. It’s the progression of the season. But it’s just finding what we were doing and ing how we did it.”
Tatis trending upward
Tatis was 2-for-3 with a walk and had his first extra-base hit (a double) in seven games last night.
He is 4-for-11 with five walks and was hit by a pitch over the past four games
“Definitely feel better,” Tatis said. “So now it’s a matter of staying consistent.”
Asked if he has relaxed a little bit, given that he has been sullen and has acknowledged being frustrated that he has not been able to help more the past several weeks, Tatis thought for just a second or two before replying.
“No,” he said. “I’m still angry.”
Tatis hit .185 with a .254 on-base percentage between May 3 and Sunday, the worst 32-game stretch in his career. His slugging percentage in that time was not the lowest over a 32-game span, because he did hit five home runs. However, he does not have a homer since May 27, a span of 10 games and 53 at-bats.
The reality is the Padres offense is not going to be better unless Tatis does heat up.
He is hitless in his past 15 at-bats with runners in scoring position after beginning the season 8-for-25 (.320).
“I don’t want to put too much on his shoulders, but he knows that,” Shildt said. “I mean, all your better players, it’s important they play well. So it’s clearly important. But it’s really more just do what you’re capable of. Don’t try to carry more, which I do think has been a part of some of the last little bit. He cares. His care factor is really high. And just trying to do more to carry this club. And, ultimately, all I want him and the rest of the group to do is just go out and be themselves.”
Dark cloud
I wrote (here) on Thursday’s off-day about the Padres’ looming potential pitching crisis.
To be clear, the pitching staff is not the Padres’ problem. Yet.
The potential crisis is that the bullpen, which has been mostly magnificent, ends up getting worn down.
The reality is the Padres cannot expect to continue being a contender with the combination of starting pitchers so infrequently getting deep in games and the offense so infrequently scoring more than three runs.
Last night was the seventh time in the past 14 games a starting pitcher did not make it a full five innings. It was the 10th time in 14 games the Padres failed to score more than three runs.
That will almost certainly turn the team’s strength (the bullpen) into a weakness if it continues.
Now, there finally does seem to be a high level of optimism regarding the return of Yu Darvish. The right-hander, sidelined by an elbow issue since the middle of spring training, is scheduled to throw to hitters at the team’s complex today. How he recovers will determine the next step, but that next step could be a rehab assignment and a season debut before the All-Star break.
There is virtually no level of anything except hope regarding Michael King. That is because there seems to be no way of knowing when he will return.
The nerve impingement in his neck/shoulder area could improve any day, allowing him to begin a throwing program. Or it could continue to limit him for several weeks or even months.
King is said by sources to be improving in recent days. But that improvement is incremental.
He is not throwing, concentrating instead on treatment and exploring different remedies that could help him get better faster.
Pitching puzzle
I mentioned in the off-day story how masterful Shildt and pitching coach Ruben Niebla have been at managing the bullpen’s workload.
That is especially true lately, as Padres relievers have worked the sixth-most innings among all MLB bullpen since May 21.
One thing Shildt has done all season is that he typically does not push a reliever to go as long as he conceivably could.
That was on display last night, as he pulled Sean Reynolds after 1⅔ innings and had Wandy Peralta and David Morgan throw the final two innings.
That makes them all ostensibly available today.
“That was part of the calculus for all that,” Shildt said. “It’s a balancing act. We’re coming off an off-day and starting (13 games) in a row. … We started to play the matrix game.”
The Padres bullpen’s 3.09 ERA is third best in the major leagues. And one thing they have going for them even as their workload has increased in of innings is that they have continued to be efficient. Their average of 16 pitches per innings is fourth-best in MLB.
On to something
when I wrote last Monday morning (here) about a component of Merrill’s struggle being that he was swinging so often at the first pitch of his plate appearances.
“That’s on me to adjust and me to know, ‘Hey, if you’re not getting that first pitch …’” he said at the time. “They’re not going to throw it to you.”
Well, he has swung at the first pitch in just five of his 18 plate appearances since then. (He did so once last night and singled.)
Merrill was 1-for-3 with a walk last night and is 5-for-14 with a triple, a double, three walks and a sacrifice fly over the past four games.
The three walks are two more than he had in his previous 11 games.
Tidbits
- Please check out Annie Heilbrunn’s Q&A with reliever Adrián Morejón (here). In addition to talking about his improvements on and off the field and his satisfaction being full-time reliever, he discusses leaving Cuba when he was 15.
- Cronenworth was 1-for-3 to extend his on-base streak to 11 games. Funny thing, his on-base percentage of .341 during the streak has brought down his overall OBP. His season OBP has dropped from .376 to .367 in the 11 games.
- Reynolds has not allowed a run in 9⅓ innings (six appearances). He has allowed three hits, walked two and stranded all three runners he has inherited in that span.
- There is little minimizing Xander Bogaerts’ struggles this season, as he is batting .236 with a .636 OPS. But part of his 0-for-4 last night was a 109 mph lineout to center field. Bogaerts is batting .476 on balls put in play at 100 mph or harder. That is 91 points lower than the MLB average.
- Elias Díaz struck out all three times he batted last night to extend his strikeout streak to six games. He is 3-for-18 with 10 strikeouts during that span.
All right, that’s it for me.
Talk to you tomorrow.
