Good morning,
Such is the plight of a team hovering around .500.
And the plight of its fans.
It will tease you with a few winning streaks and disappoint with a few losing streaks. It will get you thinking about what is possible when it scores 10 runs one night and infuriate you when it gets three hits the next night.
It takes a step forward and a step back, two steps forward and two steps back. Up and down, spinning your head around as the team you follow twists in the wind.
“Whenever you’re playing .500 ball, that’s kind of what it is,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said before yesterday’s game. “You win a couple, lose a couple, sweep a team, get swept by a team kind of stuff. The thing is, we’ve hung in there amidst a lot of injuries and not great performances at time. So hopefully that bodes well for the second half for things to even out in our favor.”
The Padres last night continued plodding toward the All-Star break, falling two games below .500, with a 5-3 loss to the Blue Jays that had some familiar themes — getting held in check by a struggling starting pitcher, failing to add on and finishing with an abundance of hits but not enough when they really would have mattered.
You can read about all that in my game story (here).
X has to hit
Xander Bogaerts began last night’s game as a potential hero, hitting a two-run homer in the first inning. He finished the game batting as the potential winning run and made the final out.
“Started off great and ended probably not the way you envisioned the day,” he said. “It sucks.”
The day began with questions about just why it was that Stammen was batting Bogaerts in the No.3 spot for the fourth consecutive day when Bogaerts was 4-for-28 (.143) over his previous eight games and was batting .194/.290/.264 in his previous 60 games.
Stammen’s answer might have struck as curious.
“He’s had a little bit of tough stretch here the last couple months,” Stammen said. “Trying to give him a little confidence boost at a place in the lineup he has hit a lot of times in his career and done very well there. Just trying to mix it up and see if we can get one of what we think is our best players, get him going.”
Say what you will, but Stammen knows the Padres almost certainly need Bogaerts to finish in the same manner he has in his previous three seasons with them.
He has been a key component to their strong finishes.
Inefficiently inconsistent
The Padres reached double-digits in hits again and walked three times, and they again did not make enough of those base runners.
“Just kind of a lot of missed opportunities,” Stammen said. “… 10 hits today. I think we had a few walks too in there. So, we had a lot of base runners, and we didn’t really cash them in. Only one hit with a runner in scoring position. That was the last one in the game.”
It was nothing new.
The Padres have a .324 on-base percentage since June 8, 13th in the major leagues in that span. They have scored 125 runs, which ranks 22nd.
Their rate of 2.92 baserunners per run ranks last in MLB in that period.
The Padres’ only runner in scoring position between the first and ninth innings last night was Ty France, who should have scored after he led off the sixth inning with a double and moved to third on a fly ball out.
But Luis Rengifo’s strikeout and Luis Campusano’s foul out stranded France.
To say the France should have scored might be overstating it.
But the Padres have driven home a runner who reaches third base with less than two outs a little more than 47% of the time. Just five clubs are worse. The MLB average is 51.6%.
The Padres entered yesterday ranked eighth in MLB in percentage of productive outs converted (30.8%). That is not terrible. But it is a precipitous drop-off. They led the league into May.
They are actually batting significantly better with runners in scoring position. They are batting .286 in that circumstances in 30 games since June 8 (eighth in MLB) compared to .235 (22nd) before that. But they have gotten zero or one hit with runners in scoring position in nine of those 30 games.
Explaining the wait on Jake
Stammen sent the switch-hitting Rengifo to the plate to hit for Jase Bowen against righty Chad Dallas in the sixth inning.
There was simply no way that Stammen thought Rengifo was a better option than Jake Cronenworth, who bats from the left side. So it was obvious in the moment that either Cronenworth was hurt or that Stammen was committed to him getting a day off.
It was the latter.
“I was trying to give him a blow today,” Stammen said. “Whoever goes in there has to go play second base after that. So, just a little bit of giving Jake a day based on him coming back off the IL and basically playing every day since then.”
Rengifo remained in the game at second base while Fernando Tatis Jr. moved from second to right field to replace Bowen.
Cronenworth ended up pinch-hitting for Miguel Andujar in the ninth inning and striking out against Louis Varland.
Rengifo, hit .205 for the Brewers before being released in mid-June, was making his first plate appearance for the Padres and first big-league plate appearance since June 14. Cronenworth was hitting .303 (10-for-33) in his previous nine games.
“I’m not playing every game like Game 7 at this point,” Stammen said. “I think that would be a little foolish. I’ve got to manage that myself. Like, we want to win the game, but we’ve got 26 guys on the roster and we have to trust all those guys. And they’re here for a reason. They’re Major League Baseball players. And you weigh that out every day, and you weigh the person also, and what’s best for them and how they’re going to have a successful rest of the season.”
Tidbits
Jeff Sanders wrote (here) yesterday afternoon about an injury France has been playing with and the return of Dylan Cease to Petco Park.
This week’s “Clubhouse Chatter” from Sanders (here) has players talking about which players on other teams they consider their closest friend.
Last night was the Padres’ sixth consecutive loss in a game decided by no more than two runs. They are 21-21 in those games. (While such results can be arbitrary, they were 46-35 last season and an MLB-best 40-25 in 2024.)
The Padres fell to 28-15 when scoring first. They began the season 19-5.
The Padres came back to win a remarkable 12 times in the first 23 games in which they lost a lead. Last night was their fifth straight loss in a game in which they lost a lead. (They are now 12-16 in such games.)
Manny Machado singled twice and has multiple hits in the past two games. It is the first time he has had multiple hits in back-to-back games since April 26 and 27. He was batting .232 on April 27. His current average is .196, the highest it has been since he was batting .197 on May 9.
Machado is batting .288 with a 1.094 OPS over his past 18 games (since June 20). His OPS is ninth highest in MLB in that stretch.
Rodolfo Durán singled in both of his at-bats before Campusano hit for him in the sixth. It was Durán’s second multi-hit game in 26 starts.
Gavin Sheets was 0-for-4 with a walk, which ran his on-base streak to 11 games. He is batting just .194 but getting on base at a .341 clip during the streak, which is four games shy of the career high he set last June.
All right, that’s it for me.
Talk to you tomorrow.