Padres Head To San Francisco With Slim Wild Card Lead

The San Diego Padres have jumped back into the third wild card spot, and they’ll try to maintain their narrow edge over the Arizona Diamondbacks tonight with a win to open their road series against the San Francisco Giants. 

This should go well, with the Padres are hoping it will go better than their last road venture. They lost five of six in that one, and they don’t have the luxury to let this trip get off to another bad start. 

The starter will be Robbie Ray, and he’s been a bit of a wild card in his own right. Both Ray and newly-acquired Casey Mize have been problematic since they came over at the deadline, and the Padres need to get consistent efforts from both. 

Ray didn’t provide that last time around, as he was awful in his last start last weekend against the New York Yankees. He gave up five runs on five hits in just 2-1/3 innings as he walked four with just a single strikeout. 

Walks are the big issue with Ray, as he’s been among the leaders in MLB in that category for a while. He’s also a Houdini when it comes to getting out of jams, so that’s the tradeoff there. 

Manager Craig Stammen has a quick hook these days, as the Padres have veered back toward their “all hands on deck” pitching approach for these final games. 

Stammen actually got himself in a bit of trouble with this on Wednesday against the Washington Nationals, as he forgot about the previous mound visit of pitching coach Ruben Niebla when he let starter Walker Buehler talk him into staying in against the Nats and had to come out anyway. Oops. 

The Padres have dominated the Giants lately, so that’s a good sign coming into this one. The Giants will send Anthony Molina to the mound tonight as their opener, and he’s been strong lately, with a 3-0 record and a 2.79 ERA during his recent outings. 

The basic idea here is to get into the Giants bullpen, which isn’t good. Opponents have hit .320 against the Giants pen in the last 15 days, with the hurlers havnig a 5.16 ERA to go with a WHIP of 1.62. 

The Diamondbacks are home this weekend against the Texas Rangers, so the Padres can’t afford a slipup in this series. They need to make hay and build a cushion against the Giants and the Colorado Rockies, but don’t bet on the Padres to do things the easy way.