Good morning from Cincinnati,
Probably the best thing to happen for the Padres yesterday was something that didn’t happen.
Xander Bogaerts did not go on the injured list.
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You can read in Jeff Sanders’ game preview (here) about the Padres’ optimism regarding Bogaerts’ shoulder.
Bogaerts said last night they were awaiting more test results and wanted to wait until those are in before he talks publicly.
Once the game against the Reds began, there wasn’t much for the Padres to be pleased about, though we can get into the positives of Joe Musgrove’s first start in three weeks and the ongoing fun of watching Luis Arraez.
I wrote in my game story (here) about the Padres losing again to a left-handed starter and a team with a losing record.
As mentioned in that story, there is time for those things to change. But they are bad now.
The Padres’ .208 batting average against left-handers is on pace to be their worst ever.
One thing to note is that the Padres have faced six of the 10 left-handed starters with the lowest ERA in the majors and faced seven of the 13 lefty starters with the lowest averages allowed.
But still.
Here are four of the team’s right-handed batters and their numbers against lefties.
Everyone seems to be at a loss for why this is happening. There were signs of it changing when they got nine hits against Max Fried on Friday, when he had been allowing a .185 average. But they have mostly been ice cold against lefties, particularly in May.
“We can’t discount it,” manager Mike Shildt said.
As for their losing record (11-16) against losing teams, it is a troubling trend. It cannot be overstated how universal it is for good teams to pad their records against bad teams.
The 2016 Rangers are the only team since at least 1968 to have qualified for the postseason while having a losing record against teams with losing records. (In 1968, the American League and National League split their teams into East and West divisions.)
It’s too early to get riled up about either of these numbers. But both do need to get better.
Better than it looked
Musgrove lasted just three innings in his return from the injured list.
The command of his curveball came and went. Umpire Hunter Wendelstedt’s strike zone was somewhat wavy around the edges. Two errors (one charged to Musgrove) helped the Reds to two unearned runs.
He was on a pitch limit after not pitching in a game since May 1 while he allowed his triceps tendinitis to calm down. He was only allowed to go as long as he did because he took just 11 pitches to complete the third inning.
That was perhaps the key to how to view the outing by the starter who is so crucial to the Padres’ hopes.
If not for the limit, last night had all the makings of the fairly typical Musgrove start in which he gets better as the game goes on and he finishes five or six innings without any further damage.
“I felt like I was starting to find a little bit more of a rhythm, a little more consistent in the zone, being able to attack with multiple pitches,” he said. “So a little more efficient, maybe I can stretch it into five, but just kind of ran out of pitches.”
Even when Musgrove missed in the first two innings, it was not by much. And it was with his breaking pitches after getting ahead in counts.
“Being (out) for a while, definitely part of it,” he said. “I felt like I was in a pretty good spot going into the game. But there’s a lot that goes into play coming back into an actual game atmosphere compared to bullpens. So I know it’s gonna get better and sharper. But I felt good tonight. Just didn’t command the ball too well.”
The Arraez shuffle
Arraez, who had two of the Padres’ five hits last night, is a lot of fun to watch.
It is more than his .359 batting average (23-for-64) since joining the Padres. It is more than his on-base streak, which last night reached 26 games, the longest in the major leagues this season. It is more than the fact he has struck out just twice in 68 plate appearances with the Padres or missed on just two of his past 44 swings.
It is also the joy with which he seems to play and the intensity of his at-bats.
He is fun to watch when he doesn’t swing.
The simplest way to describe what Arraez does when he was looking to swing and instead takes a pitch is to say it is a shuffle, a la Juan Soto.
But ...
“It’s different,” Arraez said.
He is right. Arraez’s shuffle is abbreviated, far generally far more subtle and with not as directly at the pitcher as Soto.
“I just do my little one,” Arraez said. “When I see it is a ball, it is just my reaction — ‘No, it’s a ball.’ I don’t do the shuffle like Juan.”
Arraez can shimmy quite a bit at times. Such as in this instance after taking a pitch over the weekend:
— CrisOnDeck (@CristianTdlc2) May 20, 2024
While Arraez also takes pitches quite often in which he never moves and clearly never intended to swing, he is on most pitches so into the process, so living with the flight of the ball, that the shuffle seems to merely flow from that.
“When I take those pitches, that’s my shuffle,” he said. “Just a little one. I don’t try to do too much. Some pitchers feel bad when we do that. But I don’t care. I go up there and fight every time.”
Tidbits
- The Padres bullpen has allowed one run in 17⅓ innings in the five games on this trip. The five hitless innings thrown by Adrián Morejón (two), Jhony Brito (1⅔ ), Yuki Matsui (one) and Stephen Kolek (one third) last night ran the bullpen’s scoreless streak to 12 innings over the past three games.
- Morejón has not allowed a run in 6⅓ innings over his past three appearances. Last night was the fourth game this season in which he has thrown at least two scoreless innings.
- Arraez has a .397 on-base percentage since joining the Padres. But Fernando Tatis Jr. is 6-for-24 with a walk and was hit by a pitch once with Arraez on base.
- Jurickson Profar’s single in the sixth inning extended his hitting streak to 10 games. He is batting .400 (14-for-35) during the streak. With seven walks, his OBP is .500 during the streak.
- Tatis got his 500th career hit last night, a single to left field in the first inning. At 25 years, 140 days old, he was the third-youngest player to reach that threshold with the Padres behind Tony Gwynn (25, 101) and Gary Sheffield (24, 170).
- Last night was the first time in six starts with the Padres that Donovan Solano did not have a hit.
- Ha-Seong Kim has stolen a base in three of the past four games and now has 11 for the season, tied for seventh in the National League.
All right, that’s it for me. (The Padres aren’t the only one who are tired after the past few days.)
Talk to you tomorrow.
