Mailbag: Worrying about the future

In today's mailbag, we have Padres fans concerning themselves with playoff roster spots and contract extensions. But first, let's talk about Bob Melvin's mistake on Thursday night.

The story of last night’s 6-2 Padres loss to the Philadelphia Phillies is pretty simple, although I must warn you that it comes with my first real (albeit, minor) criticism of Bob Melvin.

First, Joe Musgrove had a bad start. It’s fine. Not only do bad starts happen, he was coming off of COVID and completely off his rhythm. He was doing okay early and then the bottom kind of fell out, which sounds more like a rust or rhythm or stamina thing and not something that I would be concerned with.

Second, on the offensive side, things didn’t go as they had been going. Now, undoubtedly, part of that is the Phillies being better than the Diamondbacks. However, Bob Melvin messed with the lineup and deserves at least some of the blame here.

A night after the Padres scored double-digit runs, when the best thing happening in the offense over the last month had been Jurickson Profar leading off and Jake Cronenworth on fire behind him…

Jake Cronenworth didn’t play and Profar was hitting 3rd. Profar went 0-for-4 (one day after going 4-for-4 in the leadoff spot) and Segio Alcántara, the guy in the lineup filling in for Cronenworth, went 0-for-3.

The funny thing is, the Padres have hit lefties well this season. Their .737 OPS against lefties is a good 40 points higher than their team OPS against righties, but I don’t think it’s because Bob Melvin gets his lefties out of the lineup on those days and replaces them with righties.

Personally, I think it’s because guys like Manny Machado, Wil Myers, and Luke Voit have all punished left-handed pitching when they were in the lineup. Last night, none of them were. (Not sure why Voit was replaced in the lineup by Alfaro for a second straight day, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s working through an injury just like the other two guys mentioned.)

But it’s not just the moving of Profar or taking Cronenworth out of the lineup that bothered me. It’s that he did all of that in the spirit of getting more right-handed batters to face the lefty starting pitcher but then had Trent Grisham lead off! The same Trenton Marcus Grisham that has a .597 OPS against lefties this season, a number that is a bit lower than what he’s done against righties.

BoMel warned us about this months ago. “I’m a tinkerer,” he said when someone asked about his lineup construction. And, sometimes, I think he tinkers too far. And, often, I think he knows when he’s done it.

He doesn’t need me to tell him that he made a mistake with yesterday’s lineup, but he definitely did. Was it the reason the Padres lost the game? No, but it didn’t help.

Onto the mailbag!