Rout by Nationals guarantees Padres will finish first half of season with losing record
Padres pinch-hitter Gary Sánchez walks back to the dugout after striking out with the bases loaded to end the sixth inning against the Nationals on Sunday.
Rock bottom is a nebulous concept, impossible to discern in the moment.
It has seemed a few times already that maybe the 2023 Padres had hit their bottom, only to fall further. So there is no telling the depths to which a team that is underperforming at such an epic level will go.
The Padres can only hope their plummet reached its nadir on Sunday, as they melted down in front of a sellout crowd on a postcard afternoon at Petco Park.
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An 8-3 defeat the Nationals secured a series loss and assured the Padres will finish the season’s first half as losers.
“We never expected to be where we (are) record-wise at this point,” Padres manager Bob Melvin said. “But it is what it is, and it basically tells you who you are.”
Yeah, the Nationals.
“They played better than us,” Xander Bogaerts said. “You don’t win a series in one game. Obviously, we had that first day. It was a great game. We were feeling good. Got shut out the next day.”
Sound familiar? Yes. Puffed up and then punctured, that is the story of the Padres.
This series was not atypical, neither in its arc nor in the quality of the team it was against. The Padres pounded the Nationals 13-3 on Friday before losing 2-0 on Saturday and then hardly doing any better offensively in the finale against the team with the second-worst record in the National League.
Last month’s series loss at home to the Royals, who possess the second-worst record in the American League, followed a similar pattern.
“There’s been frustration all year,” Melvin said. “But this one in particular, this one we needed to come out and play a little bit better today.”
As happened on that afternoon in May, boos rained down Sunday, as the Nationals pulled away with a five-run seventh inning that was aided by two throwing errors by reliever Tim Hill.
The crowd of 41,583, the 31st sellout of the season at Petco Park, is what happens when a organization makes an unprecedented investment to put together a gaggle of uber-talented players.
Boos are what happens when that group of highly paid individuals continues to threaten to become one of the most disappointing teams in recent memory.
With three games until they reach the season’s midpoint, the team with the third-highest payroll in the major leagues is four games below .500 and seven games out of a playoff spot.
The Padres boarded a flight Sunday evening bound for Pittsburgh, where they will face the Pirates, who have lost 12 of their past 13 games. There are 84 games remaining. Teams that have taken a losing record into July have played deep into October.
But it is a rare occurence, and the Padres have shown little proclivity to fight long enough to sustain the type of winning period it will take to hoist themselves into contention.
The Padres had loosely identified as a goal going 10-5 over their five series leading up to next month’s All-Star break. The just-completed three-game set was the beginning of that.
“Obviously, we’re already two losses in,” Bogaerts said. “So that’s not a good start. But it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish. So we still have a chance to turn that around and — 10-5 and end on a really strong note. But we have to start. We have to. There’s not a lot of tomorrows left. The season is coming to an end. I mean, not soon, but it is. Keep taking on losses, it’s gonna come quick.”
Asked about the consequence of the upcoming trip to play the fourth-place (Pirates) and first-place (Reds) teams in the NL Central, Fernando Tatis Jr. said: “It’s important — as every game that we’re gonna play from here to the last game of the season. We’ve just gotta go out there and show what we’re really capable of.”
To date, the Padres have shown mostly only the ability to fold after getting close to looking like the team they were expected to be.
During their current 45-day run with a losing record, they have been within a game of .500 three times. Each time, they have lost at least two straight.
The loss that guaranteed them a losing first half of the season was a doozy.
The Nationals scoring five unearned runs and running Hill, one of the Padres’ most reliable relievers, from the game was a new kind of emphatic punctuation on another day of offensive futility.
“The pitchers have been so good for the whole year,” Bogaerts said. “One start where a starter was cruising and he ran into some trouble in one inning and the bullpen came in and couldn’t (finish) the job, you can’t fault them for that. The whole topic the whole year, pretty much, it’s been on the offense. I mean, if you’re gonna be real about it, it’s been on us. The pitching has nothing to do with it. They’ve been excellent. They’re gonna have days like this because that’s how the game is.”
The Padres spent much of Sunday’s first six innings not doing much and squandering opportunities when they were created. That was business as usual.
For the second time in two days, a two-out homer by Jeimer Candelario in the first inning put the Nationals up 1-0.
The first six Padres batters struck out against left-hander MacKenzie Gore, the former top prospect the Padres sent to Washington in August as part of the bounty paid to acquire Juan Soto.
The Padres got their first hit in the third inning on a hard grounder by Nelson Cruz that was initially ruled an error.
They stranded eight runners — three in scoring position — between the third and sixth innings. Their only run in that span came as a result of a pair of singles and a walk, with the latter single, by Tatis, tying the game 1-1 in the sixth inning against Gore (4-6, 3.89).
That was short-lived.
The Nationals retook the lead with three consecutive singles at the beginning of the sixth inning off Padres starter Seth Lugo (3-4, 4.01). And a sacrifice fly by the first batter Hill faced made it 3-1.
The Padres loaded the bases with two outs on three walks against reliever Mason Thompson in the sixth before pinch-hitter Gary Sánchez struck out against Joe LaSorsa.
Hill got the first out of the seventh and appeared to have the second out in hand when he fielded a comebacker. But his underhand toss toward first base was well out of Jake Cronenworth’s reach. Hill hit the next batter, surrendered an RBI single and then threw away another comebacker. That loaded the bases, and Lane Thomas’ double drove in two more runs, ending Hill’s day. The Nationals added two more on Joey Meneses’ double against Brent Honeywell.
Kim led off the bottom of the seventh with a home run before the next six Padres batters were retired. Brandon Dixon’s double leading off the ninth, Kim’s walk and an RBI single by Soto were all that slowed the march to another loss and more head shaking and empty stares.
“We lost,” Tatis said. “I don’t know. It’s just not good right now.”
Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune
