Padres Hope To Have Finishing Kick For Homestretch

It’s been a long season for the San Diego Padres, and it hasn’t always been pretty. The Padres were predicted to be a .500 team due to their thin rotation and the presence of some aging veterans, and at times they’ve looked like just that. 

But San Diego is still standing, just barely, and now we get to find out who the Padres really are. The Padres head into tonight’s game against the Washington Nationals a half-game out of the third wild card in the NL, and they’ve been playing leapfrog with the Arizona Diamondbacks for weeks now. 

Their season is now a 19-game sprint, so the big question is whether the Padres have a finishing kick. They have series like this weekend’s affair where San Diego shows its resilience, and road trips like last week’s where they look like a team that doesn’t belong in the playoffs at all. 

“It’s just a long season,” said outfielder Fernando Tatis Jr. in a piece written by Dennis Lin of The Athletic. “It’s a marathon. If you start good, you better hold your body to be sustainable the rest of the year. If not, you figure out how to be good after that.”

One player who seems to have figured that out is catcher Luis Campusano. He’s quietly had a very good season, even though he’s overshadowed by the star power of Tatis, third baseman Manny Machado and center fielder Jackson Merrill. He bailed the Padres out in extra innings against the New York Yankees on Friday night, then homered again in Sunday’s win. 

The Padres are hoping the Yankees seriese represents their ability to sprint to the finish, and starter Michael King talked about the team’s response to the arriveal of a top tier opponent. 

“Coming in against an AL team that has a very good chance to be the AL champion, I think that we definitely put a little bit more pressure on ourselves to make sure that we’re going to continue to compete,” said King, who pitched six scoreless innings to record a career record sixth consecutive quality start, per Lin. “I knew that coming into the series we were outside looking in, and it’d be nice to separate ourselves and give us a little room to work with.”

That room comes and goes, though. It was back last night against the Washington Nationals, as Nick Pivetta returned from an extended stint on the IL to deliver a surprisingly strong start. 

The Padres have the Nats this week, then the San Francisco Giants and the Colorado Rockies after that. The schedule is built for a big sprint, but it remains to be seen if the Padres are up for it.