Padres Will Face Some Of Best Teams In Baseball In Their Important Upcoming Homestand

San Diego Padres limped home from the recent road trip just two games over .500, and now they'll have to face some of the best teams in baseball, starting with the Atlanta Braves, then the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago Cubs. 

That might sound like an ominous scenario, but don't tell that to Padres manager Craig Stammen. 

“It's a fun challenge,” Stammen said in a piece written by Dave Sessions of MLB.com. “We get to see if we're good enough to hang with them.”

The Padres have been hanging wrll behind the Dodgers in the NL West so far. They're now nine games out just ahead of the Arizona Diamondbacks, although the mediocrity of MLB’s playoff system has them just a half-game out of a wild card berth. 

If you're a glass half-full type, you can point to signs of life from some of the Padres hitters in the middle of the lineup who are supposed to be performing. Jackson Merrill and Manny Machado both showed signs of breaking out, with Merrill hitting .314 over his last games last eight games with six RBIs, while Machado has driven in six runs in his last four games, although five of them came in a single game. 

“A few of our big boys started getting some hits in big spots,” Stammen said. “It just shows that these guys compete, they come back. We get down, we always come back. It's just kind of the M.O. of our team and identity. That's a great identity to have that's going to last a full season.”

Identity won't win games, though. For that you need a real rotation, and the Padres latest failure in that regard is Lucas Giolito, who now has a 5.16 ERA in 29 2/3 innings, with a 1.85 WHIP in seven games, according to Sessions. 

“I’m the reason the team lost and we lost the series,” Giolito said of his poor outing yesterday. “… As a big-league pitcher, you have to be able to come out the gate, throwing your pitches for strikes, and I'm just not doing that,” Giolito said. “I’m just not throwing the ball well.

“The offense is fighting. I give up three runs, we answer right back, and then I give up another one. It’s pretty [bad]. I’ve got to be better than that.”

Giolito is far from the only problem in the pitching equation. San Diego starters are 20-25, with a 4.63 ERA, which is tied for third-highest in the National League according to Sessions, and they’ve pitched 358 innings combined, fourth-fewest in the NL. Stammen has little choice but to repeat the party line, but it doesn’t seem rooted in reality at all. 

“We believe that our starting pitching will get better,” Stammen said. “We're working with them every day.”