Pirates rout Padres after Manny Machado acknowledges need for more urgency
The Pirates’ Carlos Santana passes Padres third baseman Manny Machado after hitting a two-run homer in the first inning Wednesday night.
Manny Machado felt it was time to say it is time.
“We need a little more urgency as a team,” he said. “We just do.”
He spoke Wednesday afternoon, about three hours before the Padres played the Pirates in the middle contest of their three-game series at PNC Park. There was the risk the game would not go the Padres’ way.
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It did not. The Padres fell behind early and again could not come back in what became a 7-1 loss.
A two-run homer in the first inning and five-run seventh inning were more than enough for the Pirates to win for the third time in 14 games and doom the Padres to their fourth straight defeat and third straight series loss.
Thursday’s series finale here is the Padres’ 81st game, the exact midpoint of a season that Machado acknowledged Wednesday has gone well off the tracks and is in danger of becoming a runaway train.
Machado still believes the back of his baseball card and those of his teammates will reflect their usual excellence by the end of the season, that the team with four superstars and a bunch of other accomplished and well-compensated players have time to be what was expected and make the postseason.
“We’re too good of a team to be where we’re at,” he said. “We have too many good players that can carry this team by themselves.”
Now, however, there is an acknowledgment by the man whose talent is arguably matched only by his cool nonchalance that time is running short.
“Things are getting a little bit out of hand,” Machado said. “We’ve got three months to prove people wrong. So the only thing that can change that is the urgency and the want. That’s what we’ve got to do from now on. We’ve got to want it more than everyone else.”
It seems the calendar and the calamity of the past week altered the course of Machado’s thinking. He had to this point pushed back on any and every contention that the Padres were not playing with enough exigency.
“I think we just have confident players who believe in their craft,” Machado said. “And sometimes that kind of haunts you a little bit at times. It haunts me as a player as well. You get a little bit too comfortable and you think it’s gonna come easy. And it doesn’t come that easy.”
Machado was asked Wednesday if he is embarrassed by the Padres’ performance to date, a season of inconsistency that has them six games under .500 and eight games out of the National League’s final playoff spot.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m embarrassed how I’ve been playing. I think we’re all embarrassed. We know how good of a team that we are, and we’re not living up to that standard. That’s why I’m telling you the urgency and the want is what’s gonna separate us. I think it’s in there in everyone. We just gotta find it. And when we do, let’s not let go of it.
“I’ve been around this group for quite a long time. I know when we do tighten things up, I think we do flow really well. We’ve been a little loose, and now coming down the stretch we’re going to have to tighten this (stuff) down.”
What stuff was he referring to?
“Just everything,” he said. “Focus.”
This message was also imparted in the Padres hitters’ meeting before the game.
They seemed to begin with a strong plan, with six of their first nine batters working full counts and making Pirates starter Mitch Keller throw 57 pitches in the first two innings.
The Padres drew a two-out walk and followed it with a two-out hit in both of those innings but could not forge a run from either opportunity.
Blake Snell took six pitches to retire the first two batters he faced in the bottom of the first before Henry Davis flared a single to center and Carlos Santana hit the first pitch he saw a projected 427 feet to left field to put the Pirates up 2-0.
Snell would allow just one more hit and strike out 10 in six innings.
Keller threw just 25 pitches over the next three innings and had retired 10 straight when Fernando Tatis Jr. led off the sixth inning by flaring a single to center field.
Tatis advanced to second base on a wild pitch before Juan Soto flied out to left field, Machado was called out on strikes on a pitch well off the plate and Xander Bogaerts lined the eighth pitch he saw into right field for a single that drove in Tatis.
Any chance the Padres had for a comeback was quashed when the Pirates scored five runs in the seventh on five singles, two walks and two hit batters. One of those singles was hit hard, and one of the hit batters was almost certainly attempting a bunt when he was hit on the hand.
Padres manager Bob Melvin was ejected for the third time in 10 games when he argued as vehemently as he has any call this season.
“That’s kind of how it’s been for us here,” Melvin said afterward. “If one thing goes wrong, it tends to snowball a little bit. And whether it’s (bad) breaks or not, at the end of the day, we still got beat 7-1. We didn’t do enough offensively, and we didn’t do enough on the pitching end.”
Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune
