San Diego Padres starter German Marqez put his rotation spot in jeopardy as he put the Padres behind early.
The back of the San Diego Padres rotation has been the team’s biggest weak spot so far, and it surfaced once again in a 6-2 loss to the Chicago White Sox as starter German Marquez had yet another bad outing.
The Padres had White Sox starter Noah Schulze on the ropes in the first innning of this one, but the Pads couldn’t take advantage of Schulze’s wildness and put him away. Schulze walked Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr., then balked them into scoring position before walking Xander Bogaerts, but a Ty France groundout ended the rally before it could get underway.
The White Sox took control the next inning as they batted around and scored six runs, with the big blow coming on a three-run home run by Munetaka Murakami, who now leads the majors with 13 home runs in just over a month. It was yet another example of a Marquez start turning very bad when things start to go sideways, and the Padres were unable to recover.
Marquez managed to make it through five innings to preserve the bullpen to some extent, but there wasn’t much to cheer about in this one. The lone bright spot was Fernando Tatis Jr., who didn’t homer, but Tatis did have a triple in his three-hit night as he also scored a run and drove one in.
The big question after this one was about Marqez’s rotation spot. He does give the Padres some innings, but his ERA is now at 5.76, and with Lucas Giolito and Griffin Canning on the way back from minor-league assignments it’s fair to ask if he’ll be making his next start.
“It was a struggle from the beginning,” said manager Craig Stammen in a recap written by AJ Cassavell of MLB.com. “Second inning just really got away from him. Credit to him, he stuck with it and got us through five.”
The problem with just getting through five innings is that the Padres bullpen is pulling a huge workload, and it's starting to show. The Padres either need more length from their starters or a reconfigured rotation that includes more piggyback starts involving two pitchers. Changes are coming, and Marquez is one possibility as the odd man out.
Another interesting footnote in this one was about using Tatis at second as he finally made his first serious mistake there. It happened in the second on a grounder to Machado, and what could have been a double play turned into a hot mess when Tatis noticed Chase Meidroth trying to score from third as he made turn on the forceout, but he airmailed the throw to the backstop to open up the floodgates. He didn't get an error on the play because Tatis made the turn, but it's also fair to ask if this experiment needs to end, especially with Sung Mun Song theoretically available.