Padres swept by Pirates, fall season-worst seven games below .500
The Pirates’ Jack Suwinski runs to first as Padres relief pitcher Tim Hill fields his grounder in the seventh inning. The Pirates scored two runs on the single, thanks to Hill’s throwing error.
Apocalyptic haze aside, the Padres’ season did not end Thursday afternoon.
It just seemed that way, not for the first time.
After a 5-4 loss to the Pirates that was literally and figuratively thrown away brought the Padres to the midpoint of their season, Joe Musgrove summed up how they have fared so far.
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“Horse(bleep),” he said. “It’s been really bad. All-around too.”
Perhaps enough said.
But it isn’t the end of the story, whether that means a thrilling twist and surprise ending or more of the same leading to what at this point seems will be a predictable denouement.
Like the smoke blown south from wildfires in Quebec that hovered over PNC Park the past two days, the leak in the Padres’ aspirations is omnipresent and slow moving.
A fifth straight loss left 81 games on the Padres’ schedule.
“We’re going through it right now, and everyone sees it,” Musgrove said. “We feel it, for sure. But if you think this team is rolling over, you’re sorely mistaken.”
If they haven’t laid down, they have certainly been tripping and falling.
“We weren’t beating ourselves before,” manager Bob Melvin lamented after the Padres blew a four-run lead with help from a throwing error by reliever Tim Hill in the Pirates’ three-run seventh inning.
They keep waiting and meeting and talking and tinkering and working toward an elusive “good stretch.”
The Padres spoke among themselves before the start of last weekend’s series against the Nationals about the need to go into the All-Star break strong, about a path to getting on a roll.
And instead, they are playing worse than ever. They lost two of three to Washington, which has the second-worst record in the National League, and then got swept here against a team that entered the series having lost 11 of 12.
“It’s very, very frustrating,” Xander Bogaerts said. “We haven’t played the way we want to. … It hasn’t turned. It turned, yeah. It turned the wrong way.”
Thursday was the fourth time in their past 10 games that the winning run was scored against the Padres in the sixth inning or later, the third time it occurred in the seventh or later.
This one devolved in a three-run Pirates’ seventh that was aided by Hill picking up a slow roller along the first base line, turning and throwing well wide of an unmanned first base and allowing the tying run to score.
“When I realized it wasn’t going to go (foul),” Hill said. “I picked it up and kind of hesitated because I didn’t have a clear path to throw the ball.”
As has been the case much of the season, however, a slew of missed opportunities could be lamented as well.
Just as they did in Tuesday’s 9-4 loss here, the Padres went up 3-0 in the second inning. Thursday’s initial burst was fueled by Ha-Seong Kim’s sacrifice fly and Trent Grisham’s two-run homer. This time, they even extended the lead to 4-0 on Kim’s solo homer in the fourth. Then, for the 17th time this season, they went (at least) five innings without scoring at the end of a loss while the Pirates chipped away with a run in the fourth and sixth innings.
“It sucks,” Jake Cronenworth said. “Because it’s inside of a critical point in the season where these are games that we’ve squandered we needed to win.”
The Padres (37-44) are a season-high seven games below .500, losers of three consecutive series and now have eight games and four teams between them and the National League’s final wild-card spot.
What a turn of events the past three months have brought.
The Padres began the season as a have. But they have not.
Have not hit nearly enough, have not won nearly enough, have not been consistent in almost any facet, have not done much of anything except disappoint thousands of people who were so excited by the millions of dollars spent to supposedly enhance the roster.
“I know from the outside it looks like a bunch of overpaid guys not performing,” Musgrove said. “But (expletive), I mean, sometimes there’s just no answer.”
The Padres aren’t the only ones confounded.
Recent opponents have noted privately that there simply isn’t anything to fear about the lineup. But they also predict the Padres “will be fine” and “they’re too talented” to not get hot.
It is possible the next nine games leading up to the break will determine how the Padres proceed in advance of the Aug. 1 trade deadline — with the potential to add pieces for a run at contention or beginning to reconstruct their roster by moving veterans.
As if the Padres should need anything more.
“There’s no one walking in this door that is better than we have in here right now,” Bogaerts said. “We have everything we wanted, and we can’t ask any more. No one can walk in the room and be better than anyone we have. It’s up to us.”
Musgrove allowed two runs in six innings Thursday, his sixth quality start in his past seven outings, a span in which he has a 2.13 ERA over 42⅔ innings. Blake Snell has posted a 0.73 ERA while going at least six innings in each of his past six starts. Michael Wacha, who missed his last turn in the rotation with shoulder fatigue, has a 1.14 ERA over his past nine starts.
That trio, closer Josh Hader (18 saves) and the relative consistency of Juan Soto and Kim and the mercurial performance of Fernando Tatis Jr. comprise almost the entirety of the actual evidence the Padres can possibly make something of this season.
Otherwise, it is pretty much just the names on the back of the jerseys — and those players’ past accomplishments — that provide hope.
The reality so far is that among the 11 Padres players with at least 100 plate appearances, only Kim has a higher OPS in 2023 than his career OPS entering this season. Six players are at least 80 points below than their career OPS.
“There is no way everyone in here keeps having the years they are all season,” Musgrove said.
“It’s just an unbelievable amount of talent that we have,” Bogaerts said. “We’ve been able to see it. We’ve been seeing it for less good stretches than bad stretches. It’s been a lot more bad than good. Or else our record wouldn’t be like this.”
With that mark being what it is, it probably is time to forget it — not to give up but to take a more micro view.
“Tomorrow is the only (expletive) thing that matters right now for us,” Musgrove said. “We have to really minimize and just put a small focus on what’s right in front of us. … We’ve got to look at how we’re going to win tomorrow and put everything we have into that game and then reset that and (figure out) how we win the next one. I don’t feel like we’ve done a great job of that this year. We’re not showing up with absolute focus and intensity and energy for each game. … There’s got to be a level of intent and focus on every single game. And it’s not easy. That’s exhausting over 162 games, but that’s what the best teams do.”
The Padres have put themselves in a position where they must do so.
“We backed ourselves into a corner,” Musgrove said. “But no one in here has given up. There are a lot of games we play. We go on one good run, we can get right back in the mix where it’s a reachable distance, and then it’s a dogfight for the last bit.”
Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune
