Padres avoid sweep before heading to Boston
Stammen's adjustments help lead to a Padres win, a path forward for the Midway Rising arena project, Wemby continues to make a case for NBA MVP, and a lot more in today's Front Row Seat.
The San Diego Padres once again stared a home sweep in the face and were able to avoid it with a 7-1 win over the San Francisco Giants on Wednesday afternoon.
Nick Pivetta got his control back and looked like Nick Pivetta, throwing 5 scoreless innings while striking out 8 opposing batters. Fernando Tatis Jr. was again asked to be the leadoff hitter in a slightly revamped lineup that saw 7 of the 9 Padres batters pick up a hit.
Also, those fears that some had that Nick Castellanos would be shoehorned into the everyday lineup have not yet turned out to be real.
Any hope that this version of the Padres were going to be a good, championship-contending team was likely to rest on the idea that Craig Stammen was a fast learner, not someone who magically knew how to be an MLB manager with zero experience. We’re still waiting to see if that turns out to be true or not, but at least he appears to be a bit more flexible in his thought process than Mike Shildt was last year. Maybe that’s enough.
Now, onto the links…
San Diego Padres
Merrill’s hustle, the real Pivetta, some luck and lots of hits help Padres avoid sweep by Giants - San Diego Union-Tribune
On Wednesday morning in the Padres clubhouse, with his team about to play a day game after losing the night before for the fourth time in five games this season, Merrill was bouncing off the walls. He joked, he teased, he talked to everyone who passed by.
And he stayed hyped when the game began, getting the Padres on their way to a 7-1 victory over the San Francisco Giants by scoring from first base on a ground ball and an error in the first inning.
“Jackson made a great play, great read getting to home,” manager Craig Stammen said. “He can provide that energy. He slides in, jumps around, got that youthful energy. That’s contagious and kind of helps us get going.”
Padres avoid sweep as rookie manager Craig Stammen continues learning on the job - The Athletic
On Wednesday, in search of a missing offense, Stammen debuted another lineup. The Padres had yet to score more than three runs in a single contest. They hadn’t begun a season with six such games since 1969, the franchise’s inaugural year. So, Stammen went with a novel look, deploying right-handed hitters Fernando Tatis Jr. and Xander Bogaerts at the top against Giants right-hander Adrian Houser.
It was also a configuration largely devised by someone else — in this case, bench coach and baseball lifer Randy Knorr.
“I said, ‘I’m tired. I’m not working very well on this,’” Stammen recalled. “He goes, ‘Craigger, that’s good, because I had one already written up for you.’ So, we’re riding with Randy right now.”
With a few lineup tweaks, Padres break out to back strong Pivetta - MLB.com
Right-hander Nick Pivetta set the tone, back to his usual dominant self, allowing just one hit over five scoreless innings. The fastball command that eluded him on Opening Day? It was back, in full force.
Pivetta ripped off fastballs at a 68% clip and put them wherever he wanted. He averaged a whopping 21 inches of carry (induced vertical break) on the pitch, too -- the driving force behind his eight strikeouts.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders introduces bill that could keep the Padres in San Diego - San Diego Union-Tribune
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is behind a bill that would prevent the Padres from leaving in the future — and would have kept the Chargers in San Diego. Some say the government has no place in dictating where private businesses operate.
Sanders, I-Vermont, and U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, recently introduced the Home Team Act, which would require team ownership to provide one year of notice before moving a team to a new location if the team would move across state lines or to a new metropolitan area.
During that year prior to the proposed relocation, the franchise in question would be available for other prospective owners to purchase “at a fair and reasonable price.”
Odds & Ends
San Diego explores raiding millions in golf revenue from Torrey Pines and other city courses - San Diego Union-Tribune
San Diego officials are exploring how they could use millions in profit generated by the city’s three municipal golf courses — Torrey Pines, Mission Bay and Balboa Park — to help close a projected $120 million budget deficit.
The new effort is separate from a campaign to increase the city’s share of $34 million in annual revenue generated by eight other golf facilities that the city owns but lets outside companies operate.
Among the options under consideration at the municipal courses are expanding the city’s revenue share beyond the current 9.9% and taking away some of $55 million in excess cash the courses have accumulated.
State senator looks to secure Midway Rising’s path forward, proposes CEQA exemption - Times of San Diego
State Senator Akilah Weber Pierson introduced a bill last week to exempt the project from review under the state’s landmark environmental law and make way for the plan to redevelop the roughly 50-acre area around Pechanga Arena into an urban district with 4,000 homes, acres of parks, and a new arena.
Weber Pierson’s proposal follows a California Supreme Court decision not to review a previous court ruling that threw out a 2022 voter-approved initiative to raise the height limit in the Midway area. The lower court ruled that the city failed to consider the environmental impacts of allowing taller buildings there.
Puka Nacua Is In Rehab - Defector
Levi McCathern, an attorney representing Rams wide receiver Puka Nacua, told The California Post on Wednesday that his client has checked into a rehab center in Malibu.
Last month, Nacua was sued by a woman named Madison Atiabi, who says that Nacua bit her and made an antisemitic comment on New Year’s Eve. According to Atiabi’s suit, Nacua, who previously apologized for doing an antisemitic dance on camera, said, “Fuck all the Jews” while out to dinner in Los Angeles. The lawsuit also says that later in the night, while Atiabi was in a car with Nacua, he bit her on the left shoulder and left a “circular imprint of his teeth on her body.”
Rapper J. Cole to join Chinese pro basketball team - The Athletic
The Grammy Award-winning rapper and producer is a 6-foot-3 guard who played three games for the Rwanda-based Patriots Basketball Club of the Basketball Africa League in 2021, averaging 1.7 points and 1.7 rebounds. He then played in five games for the Toronto-based Scarborough Shooting Stars of the Canadian Elite Basketball League in 2022, averaging 2.4 points, 0.6 rebounds and 0.4 assists.
Cole played high school basketball in Fayetteville, N.C., and accepted an academic scholarship to St. John’s. He tried out for the Red Storm as a walk-on in the early 2000s. Now 41, Cole will get arguably his biggest opportunity to play pro basketball for a Nanjing program that once included NBA players Willie Cauley-Stein, Tacko Fall and Antonio Blakeney.
Wembanyama doubles down on MVP chase after 41-point night - ESPN
After putting up an easy 41 points and 18 rebounds in a Wednesday night runaway road win, San Antonio Spurs center Victor Wembanyama reiterated to ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt that the MVP award is squarely in his sights.
“I do care deeply about it,” Wembanyama told ESPN. “I think that of the greats that are in the Hall of Fame -- or the best of all time -- they have fought and grabbed everything they could grab early on in their career. If I want to make my spot among the greats, I got to try to not miss any occasion to put my name up there.”
Iowa State star Audi Crooks reportedly entering transfer portal - Yahoo Sports
One of the biggest names in college basketball is ready for a change of scenery. Iowa State star Audi Crooks — who ranks second in the nation in scoring — is reportedly entering the transfer portal, per ESPN.
Crooks, 21, led the Big 12 in field-goal percentage and points per game this season. She entered the season as an All-American, the second straight year in which she received that honor.
Italy’s World Cup Nightmare Is Only Getting Worse - The Ringer
After a penalty shoot-out loss to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy will now spend a third consecutive World Cup watching from the sideline. What happened to the country’s once-proud soccer tradition? And will it get back to the top anytime soon?
Artemis Boldly Goes Where No Toilet Has Gone Before - Defector
It was about 65 minutes after liftoff, the Integrity spacecraft 800 miles above the Indian Ocean and moving at about 16,000 miles per hour, when the historic words were spoken: “Integrity, Houston, toilet is powered.”
It was a spaceflight milestone. Artemis II, which launched from Florida Wednesday evening, will put four humans around the Moon for the first time since the Apollo missions ceased in 1972. But the Orion crew vehicle, named Integrity, has something those Apollo astronauts lacked: an onboard toilet. As Orion spends its first day boosting itself to a high-Earth orbit in preparation for its lunar jaunt, it’s already farther from the planet than any crewed spacecraft in 54 years. That means its toilet is the most distant toilet in the history of humankind.