Padres Daily: Walking crazy; Machado, Grisham come through - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Good morning,

It’s the catch-22 of rooting for the Padres.

A game that featured much of what is wrong with baseball in 2021 also had so much of what the Padres do right.

Over four hours and eight minutes, there were 355 pitches thrown by 10 different pitchers. There were 16 walks and five hit batters.

Of those, the Cardinals threw 184 pitches, walked 12 and hit three.

For better or worse, the Padres don’t swing at an abundance of pitches.

In fact, they swing at fewer pitches than any other team.

So with Cardinals pitchers missing routinely and egregiously, last night got silly.

The Padres could talk all they wanted about plate discipline and taking what was given to them after their 5-4 victory, and they wouldn’t really be wrong.

But the result was a win that was more accepted than earned.

“The frustrating part is the high majority of them were pretty much unforced,” Cardinals manager Mike Shildt said of the walks. “There were just too many non-competitive pitches that didn’t give us a chance. Somehow we figured out a way with 12 walks to have the tying run at the plate in the ninth.”

Indeed. Right on all accounts.

Of the 99 balls Cardinals pitches threw, at least 43 were waste pitches. By that, I mean they were so far out of the strike zone they were never going to induce swings, especially not by the Padres.

They swing at a major league-low 43 percent of the pitches they see. They swing at just 25.9 percent of pitches they see outside the zone, second lowest in the majors (behind the Dodgers’ 25.7 percent).

The Padres walked at least once in each of the eight innings in which they batted, had the lead-off runner on base four times and at least one runner in scoring position with less than two outs in five innings.

And yet they still scored just five runs and won by the slimmest possible margin.

Had they gone better than 1-for-11 with runners in scoring position it wouldn’t have been so tense when their bullpen stumbled a bit closing out Joe Musgrove’s first win since his no-hitter.

In the end, the Padres almost couldn’t help but win. In franchise history, the Padres are 45-12 (.789) in games in which they walk at least 10 times. They are 10-4 in games in which they walk at least 12 times.

(By the way, that is correct that I said it took 4:08 for a nine-inning game. It was the Padres’ longest nine-inning game of the season, by one minute.)

Had to be

You may have heard the Padres are missing some players.

They are actually missing three players who through Sunday had combined for one-third of their hits, one-third of their doubles and half of their home runs.

If there was one virtual certainty regarding how the Padres would score enough runs to survive this time without Eric Hosmer, Wil Myers and Fernando Tatis Jr., it is that Trent Grisham and Manny Machado have to make things happen.

With fostering that in mind, Jayce Tingler moved Machado up to second in the order behind Grisham.

Grisham began the bottom of the first inning with a single and scored on Machado’s double and finished the night 1-for-2 with three walks.

Of the 24 pitches Machado saw last night, five were squarely in the zone. He hit the first one for that RBI double and another for a run-scoring single. He also walked twice.

Those were the only hits that drove in runs for the Padres last night. They scored two runs in the third inning without getting a hit, on a sacrifice fly and a fielder’s choice grounder. Another sacrifice in the fifth drove in their final run.

If you think about it, that’s kind of impressive.

Ups and downs

Ha-seong Kim had another fine defensive game while going 0-for-3 with a sacrifice fly to see his batting average drop to .195. Last night was his first time in four games since Tatis was placed on the injured list that Kim went without a hit.

Tidbits

• Machado has a hit in six of his past eight games and has reached based in seven of eight. In that span, he is 8-for-26 with six walks and has raised his batting average 17 points to .236 and his on-base percentage 23 points to .341.

• No one hits the Cardinals better than Machado, and the Cardinals are the team Machado hits best. His 1.134 career OPS against the Cardinals is the highest by any active player against them, and it is his highest OPS against any team he has played more than four times.

• Austin Nola was 0-for-1 last night. He also walked and was hit by two pitches. After beginning the season 2-for-18 with three walks, he has reached base in six of his past 10 plate appearances. That includes two hits, a walk and the three times he has been hit by a pitch.

• Grisham went 5-for-25 with two walks on the just-completed six-game road trip. He is batting .263 with a .325 OBP in 18 road games. After going 1-for-2 with three walks last night, he is batting .351 with a .478 OBP in 12 home games.

• Jake Cronenworth was 1-for-4 with a walk last night and is batting .355 (11-for-31) with a .429 OBP over the past eight games. He is the only Padres player to participate in every game this season. Last night was his fifth start at first base. (He has started 29 games at second and three at shortstop.)

• Tommy Pham was 0-for-3 with two walks last night. Since joining the Padres, he is batting .375 (6-for-16) with a .444 OBP against the Cardinals, who drafted him in 2006. He is batting .205 with a .312 OBP against every other opponent.

• Craig Stammen threw 1 1/3 innings last night and has not allowed a run in eight games (10 1/3 innings).

• Tyler O’Neill’s home run in the eighth inning last night was the fourth allowed by Emilio Pagán this season, tying his 2020 total. The eight homers since the start of last season are tied for seventh-most by a major league reliever in that span.

• For the second time in four games, Austin Adams threw nothing but sliders. Last night, it was 17 pitches to three batters. On May 7, it was 11 pitches to three batters. For the season, he has thrown his slider 88 percent of the time. Batters are actually faring better against his slider (.179) than his fastball (.150), but 19 of his 21 strikeouts have finished with a slider.

Down time

It was really nice that so many of you wrote wishing me a good day off Thursday.

Mission accomplished. After 90 minutes sitting on the tarmac in Denver without moving, the day got much better.

Here is what happened a little while after I got home.

Evie has replaced me as Penny’s main supplier of elicit food.

That’s it for me. The Padres like to play really long games, which means the newsletter gets done really late.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Adblock test (Why?)

"come" - Google News
May 15, 2021 at 09:30PM
https://ift.tt/3tSDpau

Padres Daily: Walking crazy; Machado, Grisham come through - The San Diego Union-Tribune
"come" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2S8UtrZ
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update

Bagikan Berita Ini