The San Diego Padres are 80-67 for the season, 2.5 games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers for the NL West lead and four games up on the New York Mets for the second wild card spot. The Chicago Cubs are ahead of them by four games for the first wild card spot. There are 14 games left in the regular season and the Friars aren’t hitting.
Over the past week, they have played the Colorado Rockies, Cincinnati Reds and are playing Colorado again. Against those teams they have gone 4-3, while being shutout
twice in that span by the Rockies. They have lost two games by one run and have won one game by one run. Outside of the two high-scoring Coors Field games, the Padres have scored zero runs, three runs, two runs, one run and two runs, while losing three and winning two of those games.
The pitching is no longer to blame for the struggling Friars. The starters have all put up quality starts over the past week and kept the team in those games. Michael King is back off the IL and Randy Vasquez is back from being unavailable for the birth of his child.
There are bright spots
Jackson Merrill is healthy again and back to bashing the baseball. He has a .345 average and 1.245 OPS for the week with two doubles, two triples, two homers and five RBI. He is hitting the ball all over the field, a great sign for him. Gavin Sheets continues to pound the ball. He is hitting .316 with a 1.013 OPS with a double, home run and two RBI. Jake Cronenworth, hitting in the lower third of the order, has the best OBP on the team. He combines walks and hits for a .391 success rate. Tatis is back to hitting home runs and has two this past week with five RBI.
The biggest problem
Ramón Laureano has slowed significantly for the week, only hitting .174 with a .617 OPS. His single home run and one RBI is a big change for him, but the biggest issue is that the third hitter in the lineup, who normally rakes this time of the season, is hitting .080 with a .355 OPS for the past week.
In Manny Machado’s last 11 games his average is .093 and since Aug. 1 he is hitting .188 with a .537 OPS. He hit one homer in August and has two so far this month. It is safe to say we have never seen a slump like this for Machado. He led the team in strikeouts in August with 29 and has already gotten to 10 in September.
There is an easy explanation for this prolonged slide; Machado is tired.
Dennis Lin of The Athletic has written about the weariness dogging Machado recently.
Machado spoke less than a week after he acknowledged some weariness to reporters. He added, following a sweep-sealing loss to the Baltimore Orioles: “There’s no time to take a day off. You know, I should’ve taken one earlier on in the year, but at this point, there’s 22 games left (in the regular season), and … you got to go out there and play.”
This has been the first season since 2019 that Machado hasn’t had a significant break in the season. In 2020 there was a 60-game season and every year since then he has had a break due to injury, a period of time where he was out of the lineup or off his feet for a few days or more. In his age 33 season, Machado has not had a day off. Father Time waits for no one, not even Machado. The Padres would be wise to rest Machado before their next off day on Monday and hope that helps.
Other issues
In the past four games, all decided by one or two runs, the Padres went 2-2. Despite stellar pitching that allowed eight runs over the four games, the offense could not come up with big hits in big situations. In the two loses to the Reds on Sept. 9 and 10, the Padres were 0-14 with runners in scoring position. They scored three runs to the six allowed by the pitchers.
The Petco problem
The Friars have a power outage this season. It’s both on the road and at home. Petco Park is definitely more of a pitcher’s park than a hitter’s park, but being outhomered at home 77 to 59 is difficult to understand when the Padres have adopted a hitting philosophy that is supposed to maximize their success at Petco. This problem is costing them games and needs to be addressed by the coaching staff. If not for this season, for next year they have to find an answer.
Roster changes and injury updates
David Morgan was placed on the IL, retroactive to Sept. 9, with right shoulder inflammation. LHP JP Sears was called up from El Paso to make the start, Friday.
Michael King was activated off the injured list before his start on Sept. 9 and Alek Jacob was optioned back to El Paso.
LHP Nestor Cortes was placed on the 15-day IL, retroactive to Sept. 4, with left biceps tendinitis. Ron Marinaccio was called up from El Paso.
RHP Randy Vasquez was activated in El Paso from the paternity list and called up Sept. 6. Sean Reynolds was optioned back to El Paso.
