The San Diego Padres offered some textbook examples of bad baserunning last night, and it cost them three runs.
The San Diego Padres believe in running the bases aggressively, but last night they took that approach to an unfortunate extreme as they got three runners thrown out at the plate in the first two innings of their 2-1 loss to the New York Mets last night at Citi Field.
Manager Craig Stammen defended the decisions as a whole in a followup piece from AJ Cassavell of MLB.com.
“We had three chances to score, and they got us for every single one,” said Stammen. “Our mentality is to be aggressive on the base paths, make the other team make a play. Tonight, they made the plays.”
Jake Cronenworth was the first Padre to get gunned down by right fielder Carson Benge, and he shrugged off the results as part of the formula on occasion.
“To get somebody to execute a perfect throw from the outfield -- it’s really hard,” said Cronenworth. “They executed three in two innings, two from the same guy. Credit to them.”
The coach involved in the decisions was Bob Henley, who’s operated aggressively from the third base coaching box all season long. But the third out at the plate happened in the second inning as Xander Bogaerts ran through Henley’s stop sign and later admitted, “I should have stopped.”
Benge now has nine outfield assists, which is fourth in MLB, and he’s gaining a reputation as a right fielder whose arm needs to be respected. Still, Stammen believes in forcing a perfect throw, and Benge responded with two of them.
“That throw's on the money,” Stammen said. “If it's a little bit off, we have a run. On all three of them, if any of those throws bounce a little awkwardly … we have a run. They just made perfect plays.”
Tellingly, the Padres didn’t make Henley available for comment, with Stammen fronting for his third-base coach. Stammen and Cronenworth also mentioned the opposing pitcher, Nolan McLean, although you could make a case that the base running misadventures helped McLean make it through what began as a shaky start.
“When you’re facing a guy like that and you’ve got opportunities to score early on in those innings, obviously we tried to take advantage of it,” Cronenworth said. “And obviously, yeah, they made three great throws. You wait around long enough, that guy’s going to settle in.”
Stammen leaned into McLean’s ongoing success, although there are times when he looks like a rookie and falls apart when the right-hander is faced with a lot of early traffic.
“You could say there's risk in all of them,” Stammen said. “There's also a [risk] to play conservative and hope that we get a hit off one of the best pitchers in all of baseball. We love the aggressive mentality. That's just how we're going to play baseball.”
