The great causes for hope have been a letdown so far.<\/p>\n
Robbie Ray on Friday night became the second of the two starting pitchers the Padres acquired at the trade deadline to struggle in his debut, and the opener of a six-game homestand ended with a 6-3 defeat by the Astros.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis command was definitely off a little bit,\u201d Padres manager Craig Stammen said afterward. \u201c\u2026 He grinded that outing out, gave us five, which is big, and showed how competitive he is and that he\u2019s going to be able to do that for us the rest of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Padres will need better from Ray and from their offense than they got Friday in order to climb in the standings.<\/p>\n
The loss, coupled with the Diamondbacks\u2019 walk-off victory over the Dodgers in Phoenix, dropped the Padres to two games behind Arizona and Philadelphia for the final wild-card playoff spot.<\/p>\n
The Padres made a game of it after Ray\u2019s first start for the Padres looked a lot like the starts by several of the team\u2019s pitchers this season.<\/p>\n
Down 4-0 after four innings, the Padres pulled to within a run by scoring twice in the third on a single by Manny Machado, a triple by Jackson Merrill and Gavin Sheets\u2019 double-play grounder and again in the fourth on Fernando Tatis Jr.\u2019s homer.<\/p>\n
Yuki Matsui immediately surrendered Cam Smith\u2019s second home run of the game leading off the top of the sixth inning to put the Astros back up by two.<\/p>\n
The Padres had two on with two outs in the sixth and loaded the bases with two outs in the seventh before going down in order in the final two innings while the Astros added a run against Wandy Peralta in the eighth.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just didn\u2019t click at the right time,\u201d Tatis said of the offense.<\/p>\n
Even had they hit enough to complete a comeback, it would not have changed the reality that there will be a measure of anxiety until Casey Mize and Ray take the mound for their next starts with the Padres.<\/p>\n
Ray allowing four runs on seven hits and five walks in five innings was just his worst outing in two months. So that was better than the career-worst start by\u00a0 Mize, who allowed eight runs on nine hits in 3\u2153 innings on Wednesday in Arizona.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know the reaction is, \u2018This is their first start,\u2019\u201d Stammen said. \u201cAnd they didn\u2019t pitch their best (games) of the season. But they didn\u2019t pitch their best every single time early in the season, either. So it\u2019s kind of the ebbs and flows of the season, and we\u2019re thankful that they\u2019re on our team and looking forward to the next eight, nine, 10 starts, playoff starts that they get.\u201d<\/p>\n
But there is no denying neither outing was what the Padres anticipated when they invested more than $6 million to pay the two veteran pitchers\u2019 salaries for the rest of the season while sending three of their top 10 prospects to the Giants (for Ray) and Tigers (for Mize).<\/p>\n
The Padres on Friday sent Ray to the same mound from which he held them to a run over six innings eight days earlier.<\/p>\n
Ray\u2019s start for the Giants on July 30 was a continuation of a run in which he had the major league\u2019s lowest ERA, a 1.09 mark over eight games since June 16.<\/p>\n
His Friday began as efficiently as it possibly could.<\/p>\n
Two pitches in, he had two outs.<\/p>\n
Then came 11 pitches that resulted in the Astros loading the bases on a double and two walks.<\/p>\n
Two pitches later, he got the third out. But that would be the last scoreless inning he had until he stranded Jose Altuve following a leadoff double in the fifth inning.<\/p>\n
Ray\u2019s first run allowed came when he left an 0-1 sinker in the heart of the strike zone and lined it over the wall in left field to start the second inning.<\/p>\n
It was just the third home run Ray had allowed in 12 games.<\/p>\n
The Astros went up 3-0 in the third, though it was somewhat remarkably not worse after both runs scored before an out was made.<\/p>\n
But after starting the inning by walking a batter, giving up a single, walking another batter and giving up another single, Ray got a double-play grounder and a comebacker to the mound.<\/p>\n
A double by Jake Meyers, a walk by Jeremy Pe\u00f1a and a single by Yordan Alvarez made it 4-0 in the fourth.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just kind of put myself in bad situations with the walks,\u201d Ray said \u201cI mean, I think that\u2019s the biggest thing. Was just getting a little quick tonight. Got groundballs, but, you know, they were in situations with traffic on, and I think overall just got to limit the walks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just before and just after Ray\u2019s final inning, the Padres got to Astros starter Ronel Blanco, who was pulled after Tatis launched his 10th home run of the season, a 3-1 slider hung over the middle, to the second balcony of the Western Metal building.<\/p>\n
Five relievers held the Padres scoreless the rest of the way, with former Padres closer Josh Hader getting the save with a 1-2-3 ninth.<\/p>\n
\u201cHad our chances,\u201d Stammen said. \u201cJust weren\u2019t able to come through.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The great causes for hope have been a letdown so far. Robbie Ray on Friday night became the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,1334,74,76,75,2611,127,1696],"class_list":["post-427341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-latest-headlines","tag-mlb","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-sports","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427341","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=427341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}