Good morning from Miami,
This Padres team has done something none that came before it ever had.
They have won 16 of their past 18 games.
It is a feat to be acknowledged. But it is not all that important. Not to them.
Nor would it be all that momentous to complete the first 6-0 road trip in team history today.
These types of things are merely mile markers.
“We expect to win every day we show up,” manager Mike Shildt said before yesterday’s game.
You can read in my game story (here) how the Padres went about doing so yesterday against the Marlins.
The nature of baseball and its extensive record keeping invites us to commemorate milestones and often-arbitrary statistical achievements. And going 16-2 at any point in a season certainly deserves a brief salute.
But now the Padres move on to the next game along the relentless road of a six-month season.
With 44 games remaining, they sit in the National League’s top wild-card playoff spot. Their goal is to continue playing well all the way into and through October and end up at that place the franchise has never been — a World Series parade.
What they have done by coming out of the All-Star break as MLB’s winningest team is establish they are up to the task they set forth at the start to improve as the season went along.
What winning 16 of 18 means is that they are playing well. They could have lost one or two or three of those, and it still would have been true as long as they had played virtually the same way — with clean defense, smart and agressive baserunning, generally relentless at-bats.
And that is what means something.
“It’s how we’ve grown as a group over the year,” Jake Cronenworth said.
Improvement has been the mantra all season. It remains so.
“We built this,” Jurickson Profar said. “Like, since the beginning of the season, playing good baseball, fighting no matter what. I think the baseball is rewarding us. We still need to get better in a lot of aspects, not making it that we have to keep coming back. There’s a lot of things that we gotta be better at.”
More Action
Jackson Merrill, the 21-year-old rookie who doesn’t try to hit home runs but just hits them, refuses to let his team lose.
Yesterday, he became the first player in MLB history to hit four game-tying home runs in the eighth inning or later in a span of 12 days. Well, actually, he became the first player to have ever hit that many in a span of 50 days or less.
When you have let that sink in — that a kid who a year ago yesterday played his 22nd game in Double-A is accomplishing jaw-droppingly unprecedented feats in the major leagues — you can read the story (here) I wrote after yesterday’s game about how Merrill and his teammates feel about his ability to do this sort of thing.
In the story, Profar assessed Merrill with a phrase that reminded me of Philip Rivers. The former Chargers quarterback used to say that everyone loves to win but that what makes a real winner is a severe hatred of losing.
“It’s not a (single) word that you can describe someone like that,” Profar said of Merrill. “They hate losing.”
Here are some other tangible ways Merrill is showing that:
His eighth-inning homer yesterday gave him seven game-tying RBIs, second on the team to Profar. Of his 17 homers this season, six have either tied a game or broken a tie. His six home runs in close-and-late situations are tied for the third most in the major leagues. His .351 average in those situations is 10th in the National League.
And here are Merrill’s stats during a streak of six games in which he has at least one hit and one run:
Too much of a good thing?
As Profar pointed out, the Padres could use a good blowout.
It’s nice that they could use their closer to face the middle of the opponents’ lineup on the road in the ninth inning of a tie game yesterday. And then, after Robert Suarez shut down the Marlins and the Padres scored in the top of the 10th, the Padres were able to bring in Tanner Scott, who was an All-Star for the Marlins last month before being traded to San Diego, to close out the 10th.
“It’s really a special part of our club,” Shildt said. “That depth piece is huge. … The depth in your bullpen and being able to hold it right there and come back (was) on display again tonight.”
It is incredible how deep the the trade for Scott, set-up man Jason Adam and Bryan Hoeing has made the Padres’ bullpen.
But the “again” component could end up tripping the Padres unless they can avoid some high-leverage situations a few times in the coming days.
Scott has pitched three of the past four days. Should Suarez be needed today, that would be three in four for him. The bullpen as a whole has worked 25 innings in the five games on this trip.
“It gets exhausting,” Profar said of the close games. “Especially, I think, for our bullpen.”
Updates
I didn’t mean to make this a daily thing. But here we are.
And I am tweaking it a little each day, because the Padres seem to be doing something a little different and interesting each day.
Still wondering what the difference is between last year and this? Here you go:
While the Padres have gone 16-3 since the All-Star break, the Diamondbacks have gone 16-5. The Giants have gone 14-8. Those are the three best records in baseball. The Dodgers have gone 12-8.
Even counting the 9-12 Rockies, the National League West has a combined .650 winning percentage in the second half. No other division has more than two teams with winning records since the break.
Wade back at it
Utility man Tyler Wade left the field Friday night with his nose gushing blood after it slammed against the ground as he slid head-first across home plate with the winning run in the 10th inning.
Wade had the bridge of his nose taped yesterday, but he avoided a break and was well enough to be a defensive replacement in right field in the ninth inning and score the winning run in the 10th again.
Two more
Profar was hit by two pitches yesterday, bringing his total to six in the past five games and moving him to the top of the National League with 13 on the season.
The first three in this flurry of HBPs were fastballs to the leg that left him bruised and seething. The past three pitches to hit Profar were breaking balls that got him in the foot or shin guard.
“I’m wearing it,” said Profar, who smiled after being hit both times yesterday. “A piñata over here. At this time, it’s just baseball.”
Cronenworth, who a week ago led the Padres in times being hit by a pitch, is now second by a lot even after taking a fastball in the right shoulder blade yesterday. It was the ninth time he has been hit.
Tidbits
- The Padres’ .814 winning percentage (48-11) when they score first is best in the major leagues.
- The Padres have won seven consecutive series for the first time since 2007.
- Jhony Brito came in to get the final out in the bottom of the fifth inning, ending a six-run outburst the Marlins perpetrated against Matt Waldron and Jeremiah Estrada. Brito, in his first big-league appearance since June 23, then threw two more scoreless innings.
- David Peralta was 3-for-4 with a double yesterday and is 10-for-29 (.345) over his past eight games.
- Manny Machado has at least one RBI in five consecutive games.
- Ha-Seong Kim was 2-for-3 with a walk after entering yesterday having gone 2-for-24 with four walks over his previous eight games.
- Luis Arraez has struck out in consecutive games for the first time as a member of the Padres. His rate of one strikeout every 19.1 plate appearances is best in the major leagues by more than seven plate appearances per strikeout.
- South Shore Little League from Staten Island (N.Y.) has made the Little League World Series for the first time since 1991, when Padres catcher coach and game strategy assistant Brian Esposito and former major leaguer Jason Marquis were on the team.
All right, that’s it for me. Early game today (10:40 a.m. PT).
Talk to you tomorrow.
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Originally Published: