The San Diego Padres salvaged the last game of their first homestand thanks to some lineup changes that worked.
The San Diego Padres made some lineup tweaks going into yesterday’s important 9-3 win over the San Francisco Giants, and they definitely helped.
New manager Craig Stammen turned to his bench coach and former minor league manager, Randy Knorr, to help find the answers, and it was Knorr who supplied some suggestions when Stammen found himself “exasperated,” according to a report from AJ Cassavell of MLB.com.
“We’re riding with Randy right now,” Stammen said in his post-game comments.
This wasn’t totally true, of course. Yesterday’s lineup was a collaborative effort that also included Stammer’s adjustments, as Fernando Tatis Jr. led off, with red-hot Ramon Laureano bumped up to the fifth spot and Jake Cronenworth and Gavin Sheets dropped to sixth and seventh, respectively.
The tweaks worked, although it’s important to point out that a lot of his happened due to some bad baseball for the Giants, who committed two errors that helped the Padres get out to a 3-0 lead, with the blowout occurring largely due to some sketchy pitching from San Francisco reliever Jose Butto.
The Padres will take it, though. Stammen was pleased with the results, and while he didn’t comment specifically about getting five good innings from starter Nick Pivetta, his effort allowed the Padres to look more like the team that’s made back-to-back playoff experiences.
“Today,” Stammen said, “was an example of what we could be, the type of team that we expected -- and have.”
The best comments came from Laureano, though. The right fielder has been the Padres most dynamic offensive player so far, although center fielder Jackson Merrill is starting to catch up. But it was Laureano who provided the ultimate simplification of how he’s succeeding at the plate.
“They have a ball, they try to throw strikes,” Laureano said when asked for his lineup preference. “I try to hit it. That’s all I’m thinking.”
As rewarding as this win was, it also speaks to Stammer’s inexperience as a field manager. He hasn’t been on the field for a long time, so he’s feeling his way through some important decisions, both during games and after the action ends.
He’s also doing this with what’s basically a .500 team right now according to just about every projection. The Padres might not even be that at the moment given the issues in the back of their rotation, so Stammen is facing a tough ask for a rookie manager. This is going to be a tough road trip, and it will be interesting to see how the Padres fare during their second turn through the rotation.