The San Diego Padres have a stagnant offense, and their overall RISP numbers are a big part of the problem.
The San Diego Padres have a sleepy offense that doesn’t score much, and most of the issues are well known at this point. Their stars are slumping badly, plus there are holes up and down the lineup, but there’s one issue that hasn’t been explored enough.
That problem is hitting with runners in scoring position. The Padres’ RISP stats aren’t good, and they surfaced right away last night against the Philadelphia Phillies when the Pads loaded the bases with nobody out and Manny Machado and Jackson Merrill both struck out.
“That big hit -- we’re just missing it right now,” said Padres manager Craig Stammen in a breakdown written by AJ Cassavell of MLB.com.
The Padres haven’t been total failures at this, however. They entered yesterday’s game with a RISP OPS of .763, which ranks ninth in the majors, despite an overall OPS rank of 29th, according to Cassavell.
Lately, though, they’ve been bad in this category. As Cassavell noted, they went 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position last night, and they’re now 2-for-35 across the first seven games of this homestand, including an 0-for-22 in the past three.
“We have been pretty good throughout the year in these types of situations,” Stammen said. “And then, here of late, it’s just gotten a little frustrating. We just haven’t been able to get that big hit.”
Third baseman Manny Machado and center fielder Jackson Merrill have been the big culprits, but that’s not exactly a revelation as they hit the official one-third mark of the season tonight.
“We’re not as good as we expected right now,” Stammen said. “We haven’t been scoring as many runs as we’ve become accustomed to with these types of players in the lineup. They know it. We know it. The whole world knows it.
“We keep talking about it every day. We keep trying new things and new ideas. And we keep working our tails off.”
Stammen is optimistic about this, in part because that’s part of the job description. He says the next two-thirds of the season are going to be “great,” and the manager might not be wrong about that.
The problem is that the Padres will need to be great to make the playoffs again. That overall RISP number is pretty ugly, and it’s fair to wonder how much it will improve. Teams are what they are at this point in the season for the most part, and it will be interesting to see if GM A.J. Preller can make the right move at the trade deadline to get that overall number up to where it needs to be to make them true World Series contenders.
