The San Diego Padres got shut down by Angels starter Jose Soriano, who's been doing this to a lot of teams lately.
The San Diego Padres arrived in Anaheim last night with an eight-game winning streak and plenty of confidence, but at the end of the night they were on the wrong end of an 8-0 loss to the Los Angeles Angels, and their early streak was history.
It’s not hard to figure out why. The Padres ran into the pitching buzzsaw named Jose Soriano, and no one is hitting the Angels starter right now. Soriano’s ERA actually dropped from 0.33 to 0.28 last night as he pitched 5-2/3 innings of shutout ball while giving up just two hits and striking out eight Padres hitters.
San Diego starter Matt Waldron tried to match zeroes with Soriano as he was plugged into the rotation to sub for injured Nick Pivetta, but he was clearly outmatched in this one. The Angels lineup specializes in home runs, and Yoan Moncada started the scoring with a solo shot in the second. From there Adam Frazier hit an RBI triple after Logan O’Hoppe was hit by a pitch to drive home the second run of the inning, and Zach Neto singled home Frazier to make it 3-0.
Waldron was gone in the fourth as the Angels got two more, starting with an RBI single by Nolan Schanuel to make it 4-0, and Jo Adell added a two-run RBI double to make it 6-0. The Angels piled on in the fifth on another homer by Josh Lowe, who hit a two-run bomb after Oswald Peraza got hit by a pitch.
Padres hitters were mostly helpless in this one. The lone hits came on singles by Manny Machado and Ty France, with Gavin Sheets getting a double that was San Diego’s only extra base hit. The Padres struck out a total of 13 times, with Nick Castellanos leading the whiff parade with four K's.
San Diego was going to be stifled in this one regardless of who Soriano’s mound opponent was last night, but the loss underscored the issues the rotation now has with Pivetta out for an extended stretch. Four of the five current Padres starters are back-of-the-rotation types, and Randy Vasquez is the only one who looks like he can consistently do better right now.
Hopefully the news that the Padres have been sold to soccer billionaire Jose E. Feliciano for $3.9 billion will allow GM A.J. Preller to make some pitching moves, but help really can’t arrive soon enough.
The series continues tonight with Yusei Kikuchi going for the Angels against German Marquez for the Padres.