Padres remember their team identity

A brilliant pitching performance by Mike Clevinger and Nick Martinez worked to remind everyone that the Padres need to get back to their strengths.

I’m going to arbitrarily and loosely break the San Diego Padres 2022 season into three parts, the third one kicking off last night, so that you understand where my head is about this team and why I feel like their win in Arizona over a very bad Diamondbacks team is so important.

Ready?

Part 1: There’s not enough offense (April/May)

Through the first part of the season, the Padres kept winning games (30-19 through May) while we kept complaining that they couldn’t possibly keep winning games forever while scoring ~2 runs per game. It just wasn’t enough, we said. Especially not with this bullpen.

The thing is, for at least that period, it was enough. Because the Padres had an overwhelming amount of pitching. Yu Darvish, Sean Manaea, MacKenzie Gore, Joe Musgrove and even Nick Martinez were all pitching so well that the Padres created an identity. They were the team that was going to beat you without much of an offense.

Now, crucial to that plan was Manny Machado, who was playing baseball at an all-world MVP-like level. We’ll get back to that.

Part 2: An offense found (June)

Some of the guys that we were waiting to break out of their slumps did so in June. Profar found his calling as a leadoff hitter, Cronenworth’s bat finally caught up, Voit became more consistent, Grisham became something more than a zero, and Manny kept hitting until injuring his ankle. Even Alfaro became something of an offensive revelation.

Pair all that offense with a pitching staff that was adding Blake Snell and Mike Clevinger to the mix, and you have a dominant baseball team. Right? Wrong. That’s baseball.

The Padres are just 15-12 in June, with one game left to play. That means they were 14-12 before yesterday’s game, going about .500 against one of the weaker parts of their schedule.

Clevinger’s season has had a few stops and starts, more on him in a second, and Snell hasn’t been able to escape a start without a really bad inning anchoring it down. MacKenzie Gore’s mechanics got out of whack, Joe Musgrove got COVID, and Manny’s ankle kinda exploded.

Somewhere around the time the manager of the team was changing for the third or fourth time this season, it became more about survival and less about leaning into the team’s identity.

A team that is striving for survival, even one as talented and together as this group, is going to attain survival at best. They might get themselves to .500 or a couple of games above. What made it all work better in the early part of the season was that, even though we were talking about them surviving the time without Tatis, this team was aiming much higher than that. They believed they were capable of more than just surviving.

Jim Russell@JimRussellSD

Bob Brenly shaking right now #Padres

11:27 PM · Jun 29, 2022

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Part 3: Hit this (yesterday-???)

I know, I know. It was against the Diamondbacks, who stink. But it really felt like the team accidentally stumbled back into their identity yesterday.

They went into the game with low expectations for Mike Clevinger, who has been something of a roller coaster ride during a roller coaster season. All he did was throw 6 scoreless innings of 1 hit/1 walk ball with 6 strikeouts, all on 86 pitches.

Then, since the bullpen was tired after tripping over its own feet the night before, Nick Martinez came in to throw 3 more scoreless innings and secure the win (earning him his 2nd save of the season). I’ll say this now before I forget to, I will be absolutely furious if the Padres trade Nick Martinez in the next month. The guy has been anything/everything the team has asked him to be.

But it was a reminder, as the team heads to Dodger Stadium to take on the Los Angeles Goliaths, that they can do more than survive. They have a strength that they can, and should, lean on.

Who cares if everyone thinks they need more offense. They’ll worry about that later, once they see Machado and Tatis swinging a bat in the cage. Right now, pitching and defense gives them the best chance to leave each game with a victory. This is the way.