A quick breather
The San Diego Padres have a rare day off! We're going to use it to look back, and then look forward.
Yesterday, the San Diego Padres lost a 3-1 game to the Chicago Cubs despite another wonderful pitching performance from Yu Darvish. It’s fine. It happens.
The most important part of the game, for the exhausted Padres, is that it was their last game before a day off. They are still in a stretch where they play 42 games in 44 days, but the most difficult part of that stretch is 20 days without a single day off, and that ended yesterday.
Let’s break this down into parts, shall we?
1st Part (May 11-23): 11-1
This was the team that faced COVID-related absences for Fernando Tatis Jr., Wil Myers, Eric Hosmer, and Jurickson Profar. The pitching was dominant, as was the top of the lineup, and they went 9-0 while sweeping an entire homestand.
2nd Part (May 24-June 9): 7-10
Here’s where the wheels really came off for the offense. I’ll explain how this could improve in the next section, but that’s basically the best way to describe what happened here. The Padres ran into some good teams (Brewers-Astros-Cubs-Mets-Cubs) and their offense wasn’t competitive.
3rd Part (June 11-June 23): ???
The Padres get today off, after playing yesterday and then traveling to New York, before playing road series against the Mets and Rockies. Then they return home to play the Reds and Dodgers.
At the very least, the series against the Reds and Rockies presents an opportunity for wins against a lesser opponent that the team hasn’t seen since playing the Mariners back in mid-May.
The key(s) to the offense
Baseball is a team sport, despite that fact that it’s almost always one batter facing one pitcher pushing the action of the game, which makes it difficult for a single player to win games by himself.
It doesn’t really matter how great the pitching has been, or even how good Fernando Tatis Jr. has been, because much of the Padres lineup is struggling at the plate.
Wil Myers and Eric Hosmer have been awful at the plate since before this tough stretch of schedule, which explains how the team was able to win so many games without them.
Jake Cronenworth batted well during the 1st Part but is batting .182 with little to no power since. He is running on fumes.
Without Austin Nola and Trent Grisham, both of whom are out with injury, the offense needs some of the guys that are here to hit. Not one or two, but four or five of them.
The missing piece
I wrote earlier this year that Trent Grisham is a superstar, the type that Padres fans would typically be losing their minds over if it wasn’t for Tatis.
Add that to the fact that the Padres don’t have any good answers for replacing him when he’s out, and Grisham becomes one of the two or three most important members of the team, and the numbers bear that out.
The Padres are 21-13 in games where Grisham is the starting CF this season.
The Padres are 16-14 in games where Grisham is not the starting CF this season.
The Padres are 9-10 since Grisham went down with an injury on May 21st.
There are some small sample sizes are play here, but basically the Padres are a .500 team when Grisham is out and a significantly better one when he’s healthy.
The good news is that he’s starting a rehab assignment with El Paso tonight in Oklahoma City. Assuming he plays well and runs without pain on his injured heel, he could join the team in Colorado early next week.
Add Grisham to the guys that are hitting well (Machado, Pham, Tatis) and it turns the top of the lineup into hell for opposing pitchers. It also puts Myers, Hosmer, and Cronenworth in better positions with less pressure on them.
Hopefully, Grisham’s return is enough to wake up the offense before the homestand and the nationally-televised series against the Dodgers in a week and a half.