The San Diego Padres and their fans asked Michael King to take the mound and provide a performance that would allow them to have a chance to get a win over the Los Angeles Dodgers and snap their six-game losing streak. He did that, but an error by Jake Cronenworth followed by a poor pitch from Adrian Morejon turned a 3-0 lead into a 4-3 loss for the Padres at Dodger Stadium on Friday night.
King gave San Diego just what it needed, and the offense did enough to score three runs against Los Angeles
starter Shohei Ohtani. King cruised through six innings and worked into the seventh when he ran into “trouble,” giving up a leadoff walk to Mookie Betts and a single to Max Muncy. King was pulled after just 75 pitches and was replaced by Morejon.
The left-handed reliever got what appeared to be a potential double play ball with a grounder from Kyle Tucker that rolled out to Cronenworth at second base. The normally dependable second baseman did not field the ball cleanly and flipped toward second base, but Muncy was able to get to the bag safely and the bases were loaded with no outs. Teoscar Hernandez wasted no time and hit the first pitch of the at-bat over the center field wall and the work that was done by King and the Padres’ offense was erased.
As a result of the home run by Hernandez, King’s line looks worse than it was. He finished with two runs allowed on three hits with two walks and five strikeouts. It was a tough ending to what was a solid start and the decision by manager Craig Stammen to pull King considering his low pitch count and his success throughout the outing will be questioned. Morejon got the ground ball he needed but Cronenworth did not make the play and that proved to be a critical error until Morejon compounded it with a hanging slider to Hernandez.
It was a deflating set of events for San Diego and that was reflected in their at-bats over the final two innings. The Padres sent three men to the plate in the eighth inning and three in the ninth and finished the game with two groundouts and four strikeouts to take a one-run loss to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and extend their current losing streak to seven games.
San Diego will send Griffin Canning and his 7.09 ERA to the mound to try to get back to .500 with a win against Yoshinobu Yamamoto today at 7:10 p.m.
Padres News:
- The health of the Padres continues to decline as Randy Vasquez and Freddy Fermin were both added to the IL on Friday. It was also announced Friday that reliever Jason Adam will be sidelined for at least a month.
- Catcher Blake Hunt is staying ready in the minors should the Padres need to bring him back to the MLB roster and he showed that with a home run in a win for El Paso.
- Jake Peavy will be on the call for the Padres/Dodgers game on Sunday for NBC/Peacock finally giving San Diego fans someone with knowledge of the Padres on a national broadcast.
- History tends to repeat itself and Dennis Lin of The Athletic believes we may be seeing that with the current pitching problems for the Padres.
- The Padres released infielder Pablo Reyes from his minor league contract.
Baseball News:
- Aroldis Chapman set the all-time record for strikeouts by a reliever to help the Boston Red Sox secure a 5-2 win over the Los Angeles Angels.
- The Colorado Rockies beat up on the San Francisco Giants in a 15-3 win.
- Nick Martinez and Junior Caminero led the Tampa Bay Rays to a 3-1 win over the Houston Astros.
- The New York Yankees snapped a seven-game losing streak with a 5-2 win over the Minnesota Twins.
- The St. Louis Cardinals go to Wrigley Field and hand the Chicago Cubs a 17-1 loss.
- The Atlanta Braves hit four home runs in their win over the New York Yankees.
- Dylan Cease throws seven innings to lead the Toronto Blue Jays past the Seattle Mariners, 2-0.
