Padres' bunt derby backs dominant Blake Snell
Padres starting pitcher Blake Snell (4) pitches against the Rays during the first inning at Petco Park on Saturday, June 17, 2023 in San Diego.
Again, Blake Snell did not get much help, but it was enough.
Just enough.
Snell struck out 12 over six dominant innings against the team that traded him away 2½ years ago and a fifth-inning bunt derby accounted for all of the Padres’ offense in a 2-0 win over Tampa Bay Rays on Saturday in front of a sellout crowd of 43,180 at Petco Park.
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“Yeah, we’re just going to bunt our way around the field,” Padres manager Bob Melvin said with a laugh after his team found a way to hand MLB’s best team just its fourth shutout loss this season. “We weren’t squaring them up, so we tried something a little different.”
To be clear, the fifth inning was not planned, per se.
But they’d squandered Fernando Tatis Jr.’s leadoff double to start the game, Zach Eflin was dealing like Snell and their left-hander deserved more than just one win for a five-start stretch that had seen him allow just two runs over 30 innings.
So Rays third baseman Isaac Paredes playing deep beyond the bag was all the invitation that Ha-Seong Kim needed to square on the first-pitch sinker running in on his hands to open the fifth.
“Eflin was pitching inside aggressively,” Kim said through interpreter Leo Bae. “I noticed maybe bunting to third base was pretty ideal. Plus Blake was pitching really good. If we scored first, then we had a good chance to win the ballgame.”
Kim’s bunt was the first of four: three traditional (one of which became a happy accident and one of which was called from the dugout) and one of the swinging variety.
While a smiling Melvin did not reveal which was called, it stands to reason that Trent Grisham — who was pinch-hit for a day earlier for another left-handed bat — was bunting on orders.
But he popped his bunt up and wound up on second when it landed in no-man’s land behind the mound, setting up first and second and nobody out for the Padres’ hottest hitter.
But Tatis liked what Kim had in mind and dropped his own bunt in front of the plate in hopes of a base hit. He settled for a sacrifice and laughed in the dugout with Melvin after the Padres’ manager made sure that no signals were crossed.
“He said, ‘That wasn’t me, right?’ ” Tatis said with a laugh. “I was like, ‘Yeah, that was me. No worries.’ ”
Juan Soto followed with a sacrifice fly to center, Grisham advanced to third on the play and the Padres had a 2-0 lead when Paredes, trying to rush the throw on Machado’s ensuing swinging bunt, could not get the ball out of his glove.
“It was a game-changer,” Tatis said. “That was the difference. Both guys were dealing and, like I said, we just find a way to play the right baseball at the time and got the success.”
The most unconventional of rallies expected from a $247 million payroll got the Padres off the hook of another poor showing with runners in scoring position as they went 1-for-7 in that department.
The Padres had a two-run lead on Sunday at Coors Field when a depleted bullpen could not take the baton cleanly after a 108-mph comebacker knocked Snell from the game.
This time, Steven Wilson struck out two in the seventh, Nick Martinez negotiated an uneventful eighth and closer Josh Hader threw a scoreless ninth for his 17th save to make sure Snell had something to show for this gem.
Naturally, Snell circled the game on his calendar about a month out.
The 30-year-old won a Cy Young with Tampa Bay in 2018, pitched the game of his life in Game 6 of the 2020 World Series when Rays manager Kevin Cash infamously lifted him in the sixth with Tampa clinging to a 1-0 lead that the bullpen immediately blew. Snell was traded to the Padres nearly two months later just as his salary was about to jump from seven figures to eight.
Yet there was never even a hint of a chip on Snell’s shoulder, not even when stepping on the mound to face the Rays for the first time Saturday.
“It’s been love since Day 1,” Snell said. “I look at it as more than just the game. I don’t think I’d be as good as I am today without them. So it’s hard to pitch with a chip, especially because I respect every one of them as a man, as a human. … A lot of people bring up the World Series. We all have to live with that and that’s OK. I’m good with that. I’ve moved on and I love Cash. I love everyone over there. I have nothing but love for the Rays.”
Well, love and punchouts.
Again featuring his curveball over his slider, all of it thrown off plus fastball command, Snell was on the wilder side on Saturday, walking three and hitting a batter. But he allowed only two hits in extending his current scoreless streak to 12 innings and a dominant stretch in which he has allowed two earned runs over his last five starts.
Snell struck out every batter in the lineup at least once in a second straight start, including the first four batters he faced. He did not allow a hit until Yandy Diaz’s two-out double in the third, stranded the two walks he issued in the fourth with a punchout of Manuel Margot and stranded the single and walk allowed in the fifth with two more punchouts.
“You know, it’s a different look for teams, especially the teams that know him a little bit,” Melvin said. “So a little bit of a hybrid curve, threw some sliders today, another good day for his change-up and a little bit of a different mix. But when the fastball command is there it sets everything else up.”
Said Snell: “I’ve been saying I feel good. I like where I’m at and I’m going to keep moving forward and however the day presents itself is how I’m going to pitch, and I’ve been staying pretty true to that.”
Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune
