Good morning from Cincinnati,
If the Padres fail to make the postseason, they will rue their performance last night more than anything that happened in Tampa Bay over the weekend.
Whatever they failed to do against the Rays, one of the majors leagues’ best teams, was softened by the uniquely quirky nature of the games.
Last night was a failure of epic proportions as baseball games go.
You can read in my game story (here) how the Padres offense blew the game well before Adrian Morejón allowed the Reds two runs in the eighth inning.
This, on a night Fernando Tatis Jr. homered twice.
“Not enough to win a ballgame,” he said.
That is because the Padres went 0-for-10 with runners in scoring position.
“We’ve got to execute in those moments, and we have been lately,” Tatis said. “But obviously today we fell short, and we’ve just got to get better.”
Not to quibble, since the gist of his statement is true. But the Padres have hit .155 (11-for-71) with runners in scoring position while losing six of their past eight. They had hit .300 over the 27 games before that, so perhaps Tatis has blocked out this horrid run.
Last night’s 4-3 loss assured the Padres a losing road trip and prevented them from gaining a game in the playoff race.
Future arrives
Ethan Salas arrived at Great American Ball Park early in last night’s game and spoke afterward.
“The end goal is never to make it here,” he said. “It’s obviously to stay. And however long that takes for me to become the baseball player that I need to to play in this league every single day, is what it’s going to take. I mean, I’m so young. I still have a lot of things to learn. I have a lot of games to experience.”
I wrote more (here) about what the 20-year-old catcher said, how the Padres plan to use him this month and what the ascension of the team’s top prospect means for his immediate future.
Cat and mouse
Reds closer Emilio Pagan did not throw Tatis anything all that near the strike zone until the third pitch of his at-bat in the ninth inning.
So Tatis waited until then to swing, and he hit that pitch over the right field wall.
It was on the first pitch he saw from Nick Lodolo in the fifth inning that Tatis lined a ball down the right field line at 105 mph and just over the wall.
The two home runs were illustrative of the dance Tatis is doing lately as pitchers are working him carefully.
“You make adjustments,” Tatis said. “Pitchers make adjustments.”
Tatis has been swinging early in counts even more frequently than normal (57% of the time over his past eight games compared to 36% before that). He has never been reluctant to let loose, and he fares relatively well when putting the ball in play on the first pitch.
His increased aggressiveness lately is not necessarily a conscious decision to swing at the first pitch. But it is at least partly due to his trying to take advantage of pitchers trying to get ahead of him — often with a fastball — before they nibble the edges of the strike zone with breaking balls.
“They see what you have been doing the last two, three weeks, and they adjust to that, and vice versa,” Tatis said. “And that’s the beauty of this game. You’ve got to keep adapting. You keep adjusting. At-bat to at-bat, pitch against pitch, and that’s how you become a consistent baseball player.”
Tatis has not reached a 3-1 count and has been to 2-1 just five times in his past 36 plate appearances (eight games). He has not walked in 50 plate appearances (11 games) when he was walking at a 9.7% rate before that.
And between going 4-for-5 with two home runs on Aug. 23 against the Twins and going 2-for-5 with two home runs last night, he had been 4-for-31 with two doubles.
Tatis was pleased.
“It’s always great when you can go the other way,” he said.
But he knew his line drive homer in the fifth probably would have been a double and his 361-foot fly ball (at 101 mph) in the ninth probably would have been an out in San Diego.
“Also, it’s Cincinnati,” Tatis said. “I feel like those two balls will not go in Petco.”
Double triple
Triples by Samad Taylor (in the first inning) and Jase Bowen (in the third inning) were hit to almost the same spot and came at the end of similarly resilient at-bats.
Taylor battled back from an 0-2 count to hit the eighth pitch of his at-bat to the gap in left-center field, where it short-hopped the wall, as he sped around the bases in 11.61 seconds at a top sprint speed of 28.6 feet per second.
Bowen was down 1-2 before hitting the seventh pitch he saw on a line to left-center, where it rolled and struck the wall about 10 feet to the right of where Taylor’s ball had hit. Bowen made it to third in 11.38 seconds while reaching a top spring speed of 29.2 feet per second.
“That’s why we put them in the lineup — that speed component that they bring to the game, where they can create a little havoc,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said. “They can bunt, they can hit one in the gap and get all the way to third, and they can steal bases. And it gives us a different dynamic of baseball when we’ve got those guys in the lineup.”
While Bowen has struggled at the plate, batting .169 with a .496 OPS in 87 plate appearances, Taylor is now batting .344 with an .855 OPS in 109 plate appearances.
Taylor returned Sunday after spending nearly two months on the injured list with an oblique strain. He was brought back to replace Luis Rengifo, whose season ended Saturday when he tore his right ACL.
Taylor is is 3-for-5 with a sacrifice bunt in two games since being activated off the injured list
“I think he picked up right where he left off the last time we saw him,” Stammen said. “And that’s what we’re going to need out of him down the stretch — those quality at-bats that he’s been giving, and the little spark plug that he is. I think Rengifo brought a lot of that. Samad’s bringing the same amount of energy, same quality at-bats.”
Tradeoff
Tatis started at second base last night for the first time in 24 games.
“He definitely loves playing the infield,” Stammen said yesterday afternoon. “It gives him a little bit of energy and a little bit of excitement. He’s into the game a little bit more. But we’re gonna miss him in right field. It’s the caveat with that.”
It was as if Stammen was prophesying.
While there is no guarantee Tatis would have made an on-target throw, he would have made a stronger throw.
StatCast did not register a speed on Bowen’s throw after he fielded a single by Héctor Rodríguez that sent Edwin Arroyo sprinting home from second base. But Tatis has one of the strongest arms in the league.
Bowen’s throw reached catcher Freddy Fermin in the left-handed batters’ box, forcing home to catch it and then making a lunging tag that was just late.
Attempt to add
New Padres owners Kwanza Jones and José E. Feliciano approved an effort to add outfielder Luis Robert Jr. to the roster, which would have ultimately cost the team close to $7 million.
The Orioles ended up with Robert, who was placed on waivers by the Mets. The order in which teams have priority on waiver claims is based on reverse winning percentage.
The 29-year-old Robert, one of the league’s better talents but also among its most injured, is batting .233/.303/.399 in 58 games this season but has hit eight home runs in 108 at-bats since returning from nearly three-month stay on the injured list due to a herniated disc.
A team acquiring a player off waivers assumes his contract. Robert is due roughly $3 million for the rest of this season with a $2 million buyout on a club option for 2027.
The addition of Robert would have also increased the Padres’ Competitive Balance Tax bill by almost $2 million, as it would have put them over the second threshold.
As it is, the Padres have a CBT payroll of $260.8 million, according to FanGraphs. Because they were also a CBT payor last season, they will pay a 20% tax on the amount they are over the first $244 million threshold. They would have paid 12% on the amount by which they exceeded $264 million.
(The CBT payroll is calculated to include the average annual value of all contracts plus benefits and other payouts.)
Feliciano and Jones officially assumed control of the Padres on Aug. 21 and have said in their public statements that they will spend prudently but ambitiously in pursuit of winning the franchise’s first World Series title.
Tidbits
The Padres entered last night’s game tied with the Blue Jays for the fewest runs scored (53) in the first inning this season. When they scored once in the top of the first, it was just the 18th time they had done so in 70 road games. When Randy Vásquez allowed a run in the bottom of the first, it was the eighth time in those 18 games that the Padres’ starting pitcher had immediately lost the lead.
Not counting the top of the ninth inning last night, the Padres have scored in 12 innings this road trip. Their opponent has answered with runs in the bottom of nine of those innings.
The Padres are 2-6 since Aug. 24 with all six losses coming by one run. Their run differential in those eight games is plus-2.
Morejón had allowed two runs (one earned) in his previous 16⅔ innings over 13 games before surrendering two runs in two-thirds of an inning last night.
Tatis is one home run away from his fourth 20-20 season. If he reaches that milestone, he will join Jackson Merrill and give the Padres two players with at least 20 home runs and 20 stolen bases in the same season for the first time ever. Tatis has 19 home runs and 31 steals, Merrill 22 homers and 24 steals. There have been just 16 20-20 seasons (by 11 players) in Padres history.
Yuki Matsui did it again last night. He extended his scoreless streak to 9⅓ innings over his past 10 appearances and extended his streak of allowing one baserunner to nine games.
Ty France’s on-base streak ended after 13 games, as he went 0-for-4 last night. He hit .295/.431/455 during the streak.
Dustin Harris and Merrill are now tied for the longest active on-base streak on the team, at six games. Merrill was 2-for-5 and was hit by a pitch last night. Harris drew a walk in a pinch-hit appearance.
Austin Hays hit a home run in his first at-bat as a member of the Padres, as a pinch-hitter on Aug. 9. He went 2-for-5 in his first start two nights later. He is batting .125 (3-for-24) with two walks since. That includes his going 0-for-2 last night. Hays, who brought a career average of .282 and OPS of .817 against left-handed pitchers, is 6-for-20 with the one homer against lefties with the Padres.
All right, that’s it for me. Early game today (9:40 a.m. PT).
Talk to you tomorrow.