Padres Daily: West about to get wild; Crone’s power zone; rest is coming

Good morning,

The Padres have won multiple series in a season against the Dodgers for the first time in five years. A win today would give them their first series sweep against the Dodgers since 2013.

The big news, however, is that Blake Snell pitched well last night.

That is the contention I made in my game story (here) from the Padres’ 3-2 victory over L.A., because of his importance to their plans to be a contending team that possesses a pitching staff that can navigate a deep postseason run.

Plus, there are there are two months — some 50 games — to go before this season gets truly interesting. (And it does appear it will get interesting around Aug. 24.)

But what the Padres are doing now, having beat the Dodgers six of the nine times they have played this season, is not unimportant.

Here’s why this series and every series against the other two top teams in the National League West is crucial:

For two of those teams that would mean a win-or-go-home Wild Card game.

“You’ll be playing each other,” Padres reliever Craig Stammen said, “and one is going to be eliminated.”

Now, here’s the crazy thing for the Padres. After tomorrow, they don’t play the Dodgers again until the end of August and don’t play the Giants until September. Then they play those two teams a total of 19 times in their final 35 games.

(Padres)

“In September it’s a lot of the Dodgers, a lot of the Giants,” Stammen said. “We’ve got a tough schedule.”

It looks like it will be even tougher (and more intense) than they figured. Virtually everyone in baseball predicted the Dodgers and Padres would be among the major leagues’ best teams. The Giants, who are 47-26 and lead the NL West by three games over the Dodgers and 4½ over the Padres, are a bit of surprise.

“We knew the Dodgers were going to be good,” Stammen said yesterday afternoon. “Maybe we didn’t expect the Giants to be 20 games over. We knew they’d be five or 10 games over.”

He nodded toward where the Dodgers were getting ready for batting practice and continued, “I think we both thought it was going to be us. But there’s another guy in the mix. That makes it all the more better. It makes winning the division an even bigger deal.”

(mlb.com)

If the standings remain anywhere near this close at the end of August, it will feel like the postseason started five weeks early.

Extra Jake

Remember last season when Jake Cronenworth seemed to almost exclusively belt extra-base hits much of the time? His first major league hit was a double, his second and fourth were triples. Half of his first 40 big-league hits went for extra bases.

Well, he’s back at it. And he’s going bigger.

He has three doubles and four homers in his past seven games. He had four home runs in 54 games last season.

Last night, he belted a two-run homer for the second straight game, and he has homered in three of the past four games. His 10 home runs this season are third on the team behind Fernando Tatis Jr. (22) and Manny Machado (11).

“This is the most home runs I’ve ever hit in a season, so I couldn’t tell you,” Cronenworth said while laughing. “You’re trying to have quality at-bats, and when you get that pitch you can drive, just go after it. You can’t control what happens after, but you put a good swing on it and kind of hope for the best.”

Cronenworth is 10-for-27 during an eight-game hitting streak.

Built-in rest coming

Eric Hosmer was back in the lineup last night. His being off for the eighth time Monday was another case of the Padres resting their players to, in the words of manager Jayce Tingler, “keep their gas tank as full as possible.”

The Padres are not only guarding against injury and trying to preserve their players for later in a season that is 102 games longer than last year, they are navigating an arduous schedule in the season’s first three months. They are the only team to have played 76 games.

Yesterday was the 32^nd game in a run of 33 games in 34 days. This stretch started with 20 games without a day off. The Padres played 24 games in the season’s first 25 days, including 17 in a row at the end.

As of tomorrow’s day off, they will have played 77 games in the season’s first 84 days. They will have 85 games to play over the season’s final 101 days. They play a stretch of 13 straight leading up to the four-day All-Star break. They have another stretch of 13 games in 13 days in August, but they are off two of the four days before that run and two of the five days after that run.

The plan will be for players to start more successive games in the season’s final three months, Tingler said, “Because we won’t have any more 33 in 34.”

Tidbits

• Last night was Clayton Kershaw’s 43^rd career start against the Padres, most by an active pitcher and eighth most all-time. He is 22-9 with a 2.09 ERA in those starts, and last night was his 16^th straight quality start against the Padres. However, the Padres have won four of the past seven games he has started against them, and he is 3-3 in those games.

• Machado struck out four times last night for just the third time in his career and the first time since May 30, 2017. That means he went 553 games without doing so.

• Mark Melancon allowed a run but earned his major league leading 22^nd save of the season. In 35 career games against the Dodgers, Melancon has a 1.24 ERA and has converted all 13 of his save opportunities.

• Catcher Webster Rivas has walked in each of the past four games he has played. He is 4-for-28 (.143) but his two walks last night upped his on-base percentage to .314 in 36 plate appearances since his May 28 call-up.

• Nabil Crismatt was perfect in the sixth and seventh innings last night to run his scoreless streak to 7 1/3 innings over four appearances before he yielded a run in the eighth inning. Crismatt has gone at least two innings in 13 of his 18 games.

• The Padres had multiple home runs in 18 of their first 66 games. They have multiple homers in seven of their past 10. They are hitting a home run every 15.1 at-bats, which leads the majors over the past 10 games and is almost twice as frequent as their rate of one homer every 33.6 at-bats in their first 66 games.

• Trent Grisham went hitless just seven times in 36 games before his season was interrupted by a heel bruise on May 21. Last night was his fourth straight game without a hit, and he has gone hitless in eight of 11 games since coming off the injured list.

(baseball-reference)

Almost perfect

The Padres have won six games in a row in large part because of the slug mentioned above.

But their defense has been virtually flawless of late as well. As much as the fact they have committed one error in the past nine games, their defensive excellence is illustrated in plays like this in the eighth inning last night:

Machado continues to have a defensive season for the ages. He went into last night leading major league third basemen with five defensive runs saved, and it feels like it should be 20. He knocked down a 103 mph ground ball last night that caromed softly to Tatis, who threw to second base for a force out in the fourth inning. He also made a leaping grab of a line drive while playing in the Manny Shift in right field.

Tatis made all the routine plays last night. Cronenworth, who is perhaps as worthy of a Gold Glove at this point as Machado is, made his usual handful of solid plays. Tommy Pham ran 93 feet to chase down a fly ball next to the side wall in left field. Right fielder Wil Myers ran 60 feet to snare a tailing 101 mph line drive by Justin Turner to end the game.

Sunset

Goodness, it was a beautiful night at Petco Park.

That’s it for me. Talk to you tomorrow.