After reeling off a four-game win streak against baseball\u2019s two top teams, the San Diego Padres were dealt their worst loss of the season at the hands of the rival Los Angeles Dodgers. L.A. scored 15 runs in total, nine of which came in the sixth inning after Randy V\u00e1squez struggled to locate his pitches, and Will Wagner made a crucial error at second base.<\/p>\n
It was a tough game to watch. But, at the end of the day, it\u2019s just one loss. Hopefully, the Friars can pick up where they left off in Game 1, and take the rubber match Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Emmet Sheehan (LAD) v. Michael King (SD)<\/p>\n
Sheehan\u2019s had a rough go of it lately in the Dodgers\u2019 rotation. After looking like a serviceable back end starter for most of the season, he\u2019s pitched incredibly poor in the month of June. He owns a 7.31 ERA in this month alone. It\u2019s ballooned his ERA from 4.50 at the beginning of the month to 5.32 entering today\u2019s matchup.<\/p>\n
That said, the Friars\u2019 lineup owns a combined .250 batting average (24 at-bats) against the right-hander. Admittedly, it\u2019s a small sample size, but the club will need to perform much better in the series finale today in order to finish the week on a high note.<\/p>\n
Speaking of high notes, King\u2019s last start against the Atlanta Braves was the best game he\u2019s pitched since he last faced the Dodgers. After pitching seven shutout innings against them in May, King was ridiculously inconsistent until facing Atlanta. He had given up three-plus runs in all five of his starts since facing L.A. for a total of 19 earned runs over 26 2\/3 innings.<\/p>\n
There was a lot to like about his outings, but King couldn\u2019t seem to limit damage in the big innings. He struggled to command his pitches well, and things went off the rails quickly. He\u2019ll hope to continue his resurgence against the division rivals in the series finale today.<\/p>\n
If the Friars are going to take the series finale, Sheehan\u2019s the best Dodgers starter to do so against. He\u2019s struggled lately and doesn\u2019t have the best track record against Padres batters. That said, with not much experience versus the righty, San Diego will need to push down on the gas.<\/p>\n
Fernando Tatis Jr., 2BSamad Taylor, RFJackson Merrill, CFManny Machado, 3BGavin Sheets, LFXander Bogaerts, SSTy France, 1BMiguel Andujar, DHRodolfo Dur\u00e1n, C<\/p>\n
Tatis has started in right field throughout this series. It\u2019s likely that changes after Wagner\u2019s costly error last night. But, Sung-Mun Song could also start at second base if called upon. The Friars haven\u2019t used him much since calling him up, but it could be worth giving him a shot against Sheehan.<\/p>\n
V\u00e1squez looked great through three innings of work. After Kyle Hart opened for him, surrendering one run through two innings of work, V\u00e1squez made it through the fifth inning scoreless before the dreaded sixth. The Padres were tied one apiece before he proceeded to give up seven runs to Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
Not helping was Ron Marinaccio, who relieved V\u00e1squez. He surrendered two more runs in the inning and three more in the eighth. David Morgan came in and gave up a run before finishing it off. Catcher Rodolfo Dur\u00e1n pitched the ninth with the game well out of hand. Not even he left unscathed, surrendering a run to the Dodgers.<\/p>\n
All that to say, it was an uncharacteristic outing for the Friars\u2019 pitching staff. Unfortunately, it\u2019s a continuing problem for V\u00e1squez, but that\u2019s a separate topic entirely. The one hopeful note is that it saved the high-leverage relievers for today\u2019s finale. Jason Adam, Yuki Matsui, Mason Miller, Adrian Morejon and Wandy Peralta are readily available out of the \u2018pen. None has an ERA above 2.60 (Adam) across the last 30 games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After reeling off a four-game win streak against baseball\u2019s two top teams, the San Diego Padres were dealt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75,95057,108390,10793],"class_list":["post-378713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-san-diego-padres-analysis","tag-san-diego-padres-game-information","tag-san-diego-padres-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}