Dodgers shut out, sweep Padres, who fall 7 games back in National League West standings
Even as the Padres try to keep it loose, they find themselves trying too hard.
“We want to win,” Manny Machado said. “Yeah, we’re pressing, for sure. We want to win a (expletive) game. That’s what it’s about. It’s about winning, and we’re not playing good baseball.”
What happened Sunday was more of the same, as the Padres continued to be unable to shake themselves awake from the recurring nightmare their 2023 has become.
Advertisement
Sunday’s result was almost as old as time for the Padres in Dodger Stadium and a recognizable storyline for them in any place on almost any day this season.
The Dodgers got big hits. The Padres hardly got any hits, let alone ones in crucial situations.
The Dodgers won 4-0 to complete a three-game sweep. The Padres are seven games back in the National League West.
Even as all that is familiar, there are Padres hitters that are virtually unrecognizable.
Machado went 0-for-3 with a walk Sunday to finish his first-ever hitless series against the Dodgers. The 2022 NL MVP runner-up is batting .232 with a .654 OPS. Xander Bogaerts’ ninth-inning double was one of the Padres’ three hits Sunday, but he is 9-for-56 (.161) over his past 10 games. Jake Cronenworth is batting .216 after he went 0-for-4 Sunday to fall to 1-for-20 over his past six games.
The message remains one of defiant confidence.
“You’ve got guys who have seven-plus years,” Machado said of the experience on the roster. “We’re all confident. Look at the numbers on our baseball cards at the end. Our baseball cards haven’t changed in 10 years. We got all-stars, we got future Hall of Famers in here. We know you just gotta trust the process. There are going to be good days, there are going to be bad days. There are going to be really good months and really bad months. You just gotta have one really good month, and that changes your whole season. So just keep playing baseball. I think that’s all we can ask.
“That’s the message that we’ve been sending in here. Everybody’s working their ass off. And hey, we lost. We got swept. So be it. We’ve got to go out there and keep playing, keep doing what we’re doing every single day. Keep coming in here every day and working like we have been ... and things will turn.”
In their 17th loss in their past 19 games in Los Angeles, the Padres had three hits in all and were 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position. They are batting an MLB-low .198 with runners in scoring position.
They began the game with Fernando Tatis Jr.’s double and began the third inning with Trent Grisham’s double. There was not another hit in either of those innings.
So the Padres were already 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position by the time Mookie Betts hit a two-run homer in the third inning.
That would have been enough for the Dodgers, as the Padres managed just three baserunners and one hit over the final six innings en route to suffering their sixth shutout of the season, tied for second most in the major leagues.
The Dodgers added two runs in the sixth inning, which made the result all but a lock. The only time the Padres have come back from a four-run deficit this season was at 7,349 feet above sea level on April 30 in Mexico City. They have scored four or more runs in a game just 19 times, tied for third fewest in the majors, and have done so just once in their past eight games.
The loss was a season-high fifth straight for the Padres and seventh in their past eight games.
Padres starting pitcher Ryan Weathers allowed three hits, walked four and was charged with four runs in 5⅔ innings. He departed with two runners on and the Padres down 2-0 before Brent Honeywell surrendered a two-run double to Miguel Vargas.
The Padres had just two walks between Grisham’s double and a one-out double by Bogaerts in the ninth inning.
Bogaerts moved to third on a groundout by Cronenworth and finished the game there when Nelson Cruz struck out.
The Padres arrived in L.A. following two losses in a three-game series in Minnesota, after which manager Bob Melvin let them know more urgency was needed.
“For me, we’re there,” Tatis said Sunday. “Our head is there. Our energy, our focus is there. But we just haven’t come out, just hasn’t been happening. These are guys that have had to struggle before and know how to handle this. … Just having a strong mindset. This is a game that will beat you down. It’ll take you down and it will tell you straight to your face that you’re not good at this. But bringing the confidence, trusting our swing, trusting the work we have put in, trusting our abilities to come out, I feel like that’s gonna be the toughest part or the biggest part.”
The results did not provide any evidence, but given the opponent and its pitching staff and what he felt he saw from his team, Melvin saw positive steps in the weekend.
“We came out, we fought as hard as we could the last three games,” he said. “Doesn’t look good when you’re not getting hits.”
He said he was pleased with the energy in the dugout.
“Once the game went along, we maybe lost a little bit of our spirit, but they pitched us really well,” Melvin said of Dodgers starter Tony Gonsolin and the four relievers who followed. “Early on in the game, again, we had some opportunities. We come out and seem to have our better at-bats early on. Then we lose the lead, and they’re not as good at the end.”
That’s what a four-run deficit can do to a group’s spirits when bad things seem like they are playing in a loop.
Based on what was seen on television and firsthand accounts, the team’s mood Sunday went from buoyant to sullen to resigned to something like gallows humor.
Later, Tatis chuckled as he recalled being on second base in the first inning and thinking things were about to change.
“That happened,” he said, smiling. “And then the other thing happened.”
The Padres laugh and they talk about faith and leaning on experience because the other option, in their mind, would be giving in to frustration and possibly entering further into a spiral.
“It’s a long way,” Tatis said. “So (much) baseball ahead of us, and you just stay positive and keep finding a way, keep putting in the work. We’re good players over here and it’s gonna click.”
That’s about all there is to say when a game comes every day and not much is going right.
“We’re doing everything we can out there and (stuff) is just not going our way, and we’re going through that stretch,” Machado said. “That’s all right. Just keep our head up and come out tomorrow. We might lose tomorrow. We might not. Who knows? But we go out there and perform, keep playing, keep playing our game, that’s all we can do. … There’s a lot of good players in here. It’s baseball. We’ll see where we’re at at the end the year, and then we’ll talk again.”
Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune
