The return of Dinelson Lamet
The San Diego Padres get back another one of their aces in the rotation today. How nervous should we be?
This afternoon, the San Diego Padres will once again attempt to avoid getting swept at home. They’ll be sending Dinelson Lamet to the mound as a starter to help in that cause, although pitching hasn’t exactly been the team’s biggest issue, and Padres fans everywhere will be holding their breath with every pitch.
Despite his large frame, there is plenty of reason for concern surrounding Lamet’s elbow. Lamet has already had Tommy John surgery once, after his rookie season in 2017, and hasn’t pitched in a game since injuring himself pitching on September 25th, 2020.
If the Padres are lucky when it comes to the health of their players, and they rarely are, the 6+ months of rest were enough for Lamet’s elbow to heal itself and he’ll be back to the guy that finished 4th in Cy Young Award voting last year. If they’re not, the door may be shut on Lamet’s career as a starting pitcher in San Diego before he turns 29.
I am hoping for the best, because adding a healthy Lamet to this rotation is one of the things that makes this team a legit threat to the Dodgers, but am also a little scared of what could be coming for Lamet’s health this season.
One of the main reasons Larry Rothschild was let go as pitching coach of the New York Yankees was, despite getting good results, the team’s pitchers kept getting hurt. If Lamet’s arm goes kaput, it’s going to warrant some questions about Rothschild’s coaching style and whether it has anything to do with the arm injuries for Mike Clevinger and Adrian Morejon.
Paddack is Paddack
As per usual, things are a little complicated when it comes to Chris Paddack.
“The Sheriff” is now 1-2 after taking the loss last night against the Brewers, giving up 5 of the 6 runs Milwaukee scored, but his stat line might tell you that he actually pitched okay:
5 IP, 1 ER, 1 BB, 5 H, 7 K
That’s not bad! And he only threw 79 pitches, meaning he probably could’ve gotten another inning in there as well, if not for being pinch-hit for in the bottom of the 5th inning.
The issue with Paddack is one that I used to refer to as The Jeff Weaver Thing.
Jeff Weaver was a very talented pitcher who played for six different teams over 11 MLB seasons. He had one major flaw. When everything was going good, he was nearly unhittable. When one thing went bad, he would usually fall apart. He’d start throwing his sinker up in the strike zone, where it would drop right into bat heads. Sound familiar?
This is how Weavers was able to do things like post a 5.18 ERA in the regular season for the St. Louis Cardinals before being one of their best postseason starters on their way to an improbable World Series victory. He could go several games, or even weeks, where nothing would go wrong and he’d be amazing.
Paddack pitched great in innings 1, 2, 4, and 5 last night. Unfortunately, that third inning went sideways after a leadoff home run and a Jurickson Profar error:
That single-walk-double-single, all with two outs, is a real killer. It would’ve helped Paddack to have a third pitch he trusted in that situation, but mostly it just showed off what could be Paddack’s biggest weakness: When the stakes get bigger, he gets worse.
He’s especially bad after a fielding error, which has been something of a calling card for him this year. He’s given up 14 runs in four games, half of them unearned. That very nearly matches his career total for unearned runs before the season (8).
This isn’t really meant to be a criticism of Chris Paddack, more of the team understanding what he is and what he is not. The 2021 Chris Paddack is here to get you innings and probably win about half of his games once the offense gets clicking. He’s not going to pitch himself out of a jam or give anyone hope that he could be a future ace. At least not until he’s throwing to a more experience catcher.
No immediate cure for the offense
As discussed yesterday, the San Diego Padres offense is struggling mostly due to injuries.
Trent Grisham returned on Tuesday night, going 0-4 with two strikeouts, and that’s good news! Tommy Pham even got a hit! Unfortunately, a day of rest for Fernando Tatis Jr. (1-1 as a pinch hitter) and Manny Machado made the already thin offense even thinner, and Corbin Burnes is pitching more like a video game character than an actual person. That and an unbelievable catch by Billy McKinney, who also hit HRs in each of the first two games of this series, were enough to shutout the Padres offense.
Tatis and Machado should be back for today’s day game. Caratini will be behind the dish again, which isn’t as good as having Austin Nola in the lineup but is a step up from Luis Campusano’s current form.
I feel like this is going to be a season in which we’re constantly waiting for everything to click for the Padres and the timing is going to be screwed up for a while. Just when we thought we didn’t need to worry about Jake Cronenworth or Wil Myers, and all we need is to get back Nola/Grisham and get Tatis/Pham going…
Jake Cronenworth is hitting .179/.226/.357 over the past week.
Wil Myers is hitting .176/.263/.176 over the past week.
Some day, everyone will be in the lineup (reasonably healthy) and they’ll all be hot together. A hot boy summer, one might call it. The Padres just have to hope that they can get it going, keep it going, and carry that momentum through the latter part of the season into the playoffs.
Everything the team is going through right now is just staying afloat until they get put those pieces together, and I don’t know that they exactly mind that they’re off to a slow start (vs. expectations). It’s better to be slumping offensively in April than in September, right?