The San Diego Padres are in the playoff race, and they have a chance to move up this week.
The San Diego Padres didn’t have a great road trip, but they did have a good time in South Beach. The Padres swept the Miami Marlins over the weekend, and they’re now just two games out in the wild card race.
The Padres played the way they were supposed to going into the season, using a combination of good pitching, timely hitting and contributions from up and down the lineup to take down Miami. They did use an unconventional pitching approach, however, as the Pads have finally admitted that they don’thave the starting pitching to consistently win games.
Instead, they’re using a rotating cast of hurlers, with only Michael King and Walker Buehler as established members of the “rotation.” Second baseman Jake Cronenworth was a constant contributor offensively, and he sent a barely-veiled message in his post-game comments yesterday.
“If we keep playing like this,” he said in a piece written by AJ Cassavell of MLB.com, “we’re going to put ourselves in a position to make A.J. help this team.”
GM A.J. Preller would probably love to help, but the sale of the team hasn’t been finalized yet, so we really don’t know how many moves he’ll be allowed to make, and we also have no idea of what the magnitude of those moves might be.
Manager Craig Stammen chose to stay on message, using a wrestling metaphor to describe the team’s weekend.
“They’ve picked themselves up off the mat,” manager Craig Stammen said of his offense overall. “They were getting beat up from everywhere and anywhere. Including internally, with, like: ‘We’ve got to get better.’ They put the work in.”
The Padres still have plenty of work to do, though, and this week it will be happening in the NL West. The Padres host the Colorado Rockies and San Francisco Giants this week, and the team they’re trying to catch for a wild card berth is the Arizona Diamondbacks, who currently sit just above them in the division standings while being two games up in the wild-card listings.
“Listen, it’s a long season,” said third baseman Manny Machado. “We preach it here a lot. It’s about doing your consistent work. … We’ve had our ups and downs. We started off hot. We got really bad. Then, things are starting to kind of fall in place for us right now.”
Jackson Merrill has started to hit lately, and he provided a succinct summary of where the Padres are right now.
“I said it before the game, I said: ‘We win today, we sweep a series, off-day tomorrow -- it’s going to be the best flight of the year,” Merrill stated. “We got down, but came back. That’s our team right there.
“It’ll be a happy flight. Back to work on Tuesday.”
