{"id":458837,"date":"2026-09-10T01:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T01:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/458837\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T01:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T01:42:09","slug":"tom-krasovic-defense-the-difference-maker-in-padres-sweep-of-rebuilding-nationals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/458837\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Krasovic: Defense the difference-maker in Padres’ sweep of rebuilding Nationals"},"content":{"rendered":"

What a deal for the Padres.<\/p>\n

They charged major-league prices while the visiting team played minor-league defense.<\/p>\n

The young Washington Nationals defended like the Washington Generals. The Padres maintained a big-league standard. The result was a three-game sweep capped by Wednesday\u2019s 9-2 victory before another large crowd<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It figures to get even better for the Padres in years ahead.<\/p>\n

Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred wants club owners to approve two expansion franchises before he retires in January 2029, per an ESPN report Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Expansion means more training-wheel games involving unrefined players.<\/p>\n

Which should mean more wins for the Padres.<\/p>\n

Time will tell there, but the Padres tend to carry a much higher payroll than all other small-market teams. Under A.J. Preller, they seem disinclined to undergo lengthy rebuilds. They trust their ability to rebuild the farm system and the big-league team in a hurry.<\/p>\n

These young Nationals do hit a lot of home runs.<\/p>\n

And they\u2019ve scored the most runs in the National League.<\/p>\n

But they give away too many outs on defense.<\/p>\n

The loose play this week burdened a pitching staff that also lacks big-league polish, giving up too many home runs and walks.<\/p>\n

So it wasn\u2019t surprising that late Wednesday afternoon, the ballpark announcer bellowed \u201cPadres SWEEP\u201d and Padres standouts Jackson Merrill (two home runs, six RBIs), Ty France (three hits, .294 batting average) and Fernando Tatis Jr. (three hits, .284) headed toward the celebration line with big smiles.<\/p>\n

Just one inning into the series opener, the Nats muffed a defensive play.<\/p>\n

Another blunder afield by the visitors came two innings later.<\/p>\n

The Padres turned those flubs into three early runs and won, 3-2.<\/a><\/p>\n

Advantaged Tuesday night by a Nats reliever who walked the bases loaded with his team ahead by three runs, the Padres rallied for the 5-4 victory, making it an MLB single-season-record 38 blown saves for Washington.<\/a><\/p>\n

When Washington\u2019s starting pitcher erred Wednesday, chucking the ball several feet wide of first base, the Padres were off and running toward their fifth win in six games, counting the series victory against the Yankees to begin the homestand.<\/p>\n

The Nats didn\u2019t have this performance in mind when they came to muggy San Diego on Labor Day.<\/p>\n

After all, they\u2019d improved defensively in recent weeks, after having demonstrated all too often there\u2019s no D in Nationals.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the beginning of the year, we were terrible, to put it pretty bluntly,\u201d manager Blake Butera said of the defense after Monday\u2019s sloppy loss. \u201cThere are still some things we need to be better at.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 162-game MLB season serves up an extraordinary number of official games in which one or two teams in effect conduct auditions for several players.<\/p>\n

The Nationals stand as one of those teams right now, in part because the Aug. 3 trade deadline saw them trade off a few veterans to contending clubs. Doing so opened up spots for prospective big leaguers while also creating positional flux that further challenged the defense.<\/p>\n

Butera was candid about what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s been some guys that are learning on the fly up here in the big leagues and are getting some experience,\u201d said the manager, a 33-year-old former minor-league infielder who left a developmental post with the Tampa Rays to take over Washington in October.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, we\u2019re trying to, one, develop; and two, evaluate \u2014 especially as we move forward. Some of this is going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Padres occupy the other end of the win-now spectrum.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re desperate to outduel the Diamondbacks in the wild-card race.<\/p>\n

Butera mentioned several strong suits of the mature, well-resourced Padres, who have MLB\u2019s eighth-ranked luxury-tax payroll and stand second in home attendance.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a veteran team,\u201d he said. \u201cGood lineup. They have good pitching. It\u2019s a well-built team. They play the game hard. Tatis runs everything out. They have guys that have been there and done that, and been through a lot of different types of environments. And then have played in September and October \u2014 playoff baseball.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, whenever you\u2019re on a team like that, it\u2019s nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Padres went through their own Dark Ages. From 2008 through 2019, they had only one winning season.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re enjoying life higher up the food chain.<\/p>\n

Down to 16 games, the schedule will serve up two more favorable opponents:\u00a0the Giants (62-85) for three games in San Francisco, followed by four high-altitude games against the Rockies (55-89).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What a deal for the Padres. They charged major-league prices while the visiting team played minor-league defense. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458838,"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-458837","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\/458837","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=458837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}