Padres Punished By Dodgers, 15-3, As Vasquez’s Ongoing Struggles Continue

The San Diego Padres went into the second game of their three-game set against the Los Angeles Dodgers with a chance to clinch the series, but that possibility quickly evaporated when bulk reliever Randy Vasquez gave up seven of the nine runs that scored in the sixth inning of what became a 15-3 route by LA. 

The game was tight throug five. The Dodgers scored first via an RBI double in the second inning off opener Kyle Hart, and Gavin Sheets tied the game with a solo homer in the fifth off LA starter Yoshinobu Yamomoto. 

After that all bets were off. The Dodgers sent a dozen hitters to the dish against Vasquez, with the feature hits being a three-run homer by Mookie Betts as well a two-run shot from Kyle Tucker and a solo homer by Dalton Rushing. 

That made it 10-1, and the rest was window dressing. The Padres did get solo runs in the sixth and seventh, but the Dodgers piled on with four more in the eighth and another in the ninth, and by the end of the night it was catcher Rodolfo Duran doing the honors on the mound for the Padres.  

Vasquez has been struggling lately in a big way. He had a 2.68 ERA going into his start on May 20, according to AJ Cassavell of MLB.com, but that number has ballooned to 6.59 in his last seven outings, and he’s gone more than five innings just once in those starts. 

The Padres tried bumping him back in the rotation to give him some extra recovery time, and they gave Hart an extra inning as the opener last night. But neither strategy has worked, and it isn’t hard to figure out why. 

“It’s just the location of my pitches,” Vásquez said, through interpreter Jorge Merlos. “I’m paying for it at the end of the day.”

Vasquez is still scheduled to pitch the opener of the Padres’ four-game series against the Dodgers in LA on Thursday, but he’ll have to do a lot better to keep his spot in the rotation after this one. 

“Just keep working,” Vásquez said. “Just keep working … to make sure that I have all the confidence in the world to come back in the next start.”

The Padres still have a chance to come back and win the series, and they’ll send Michael King to the mound against Emmet Sheehan for the Dodgers to try and get it done.