Now or never

The San Diego Padres don't have any more time to figure themselves out. They need to start winning more often if they're going to fulfill their destiny.

Hi there. I am back from vacation, which put me in a location where San Diego Padres games didn’t start until 10pm and ended long after I had fallen asleep. I haven’t seen a lot of this team, and have mostly been living off of recaps, highlights and podcasts to try and maintain a sense of where they are.

I saw a couple of players and coaches quotes after their last game, the second of two straight 2-1 wins over the hapless Washington Nationals, saying that every game from here on out needs to be treated like a playoff game. At least they understand that they wasted away whatever cushion they had.

This Nationals-Marlins-Nationals 10-game spell was supposed to be a really easy part of the schedule. I may have said something about how I’m expecting them to win every one of those games but would understand if there were a loss or two. They went 5-5. It’s not good enough.

The funny thing is, this is still a really good team on paper. Not the best roster in baseball like it might’ve looked like with Fernando Tatis Jr. on it, but enough talent that you would believe they had a chance to win a couple of playoff series. I wish there were an easier answer for why all of these talented pieces, when put together, aren’t yielding the results you would expect. That’s life or baseball or something, but it’s definitely hard to swallow.

The schedule gets harder now. Two games against a feisty Guardians team. Then the Royals, right before taking on the Giants and Dodgers. Then the Diamondbacks, right before taking on the Dodgers and Mariners. 8 of those 19 games are home games, meaning the rest are not. Maybe that could be a good thing?

I’m hoping that a couple of wins, and some confidence that Josh Bell has figured out whatever was plaguing his swing, paired with a day off and another day further away from the Tatis suspension crap, could be enough to get them on a roll.

Bob Melvin’s teams have a history of getting really hot for long stretches of time and the Padres really haven’t had that period yet this year. But, if every game is going to be treated like a playoff game, there’s no better time to start winning than right now.