Brandon Brown
Last weekend, the San Diego Padres secured perhaps their best series win of the young season, winning two of three from NL West rival the Los Angeles Dodgers at Petco Park. Luis Arráez provided the only walk-off on Friday nightin his first home game as a Padre, then Yu Darvish & Co. shut out Los Angeles on Sunday Night Baseball to secure the series victory.
And since the Padres always seem to take a step back every time they take a step forward, they followed up their series win over the Dodgers with two straight losses to the lowly Colorado Rockies. A four-run sixth inning put Tuesday’s game out of reach (COL 6, SD 3). The Padres are 22-23 and haven’t played more than two games above .500 all season.
“Our big guys, we’re not swinging very well. Let’s be honest,” said Manny Machado after Tuesday’s defeat (via MLB.com). “We’re not playing at our highest level and we’re at .500. We’re still playing good baseball. We’re winning games, we’re beating tough teams, we’re doing what we need to be doing, and we’re not even going yet.
Machado went 1-for-4 in Tuesday’s game and is on a .228/.282/.354 batting line in 45 games. He’s coming off elbow surgery—Machado was limited to DH duty for the first four weeks of the season—although he refused to use that as an excuse for his poor performance. Ultimately, he’s healthy enough to be in the lineup, so he’s healthy enough to produce.
“There’s no excuse. It’s not my elbow. Obviously, we all know I had surgery. I’m not making the excuse that my swing isn’t where it should be because of my elbow. Because there are days when I feel great,” Machado said (via MLB.com). “It’s just a matter of tweaking and finding things that click. Right now, things aren’t clicking. You just have to keep swinging, keep working until it happens. Because when it does, it’s going to be fun.”
Machado is hardly the only underperforming big name, Padre. Xander Bogaerts is hitting .213/.263/.316 with no slugging, with his highest strikeout rate since his rookie season. Joe Musgrove had a 6.37 ERA in eight starts before landing on the injured list. Ha-Seong Kim has been strangely error-prone at shortstop after he and Bogaerts switched positions to improve internal defense.
Even with all the poor performances, the Padres rank 11th in runs scored per game, so it’s not like they’re struggling to score three runs a night. The biggest problem is a) they are allowing the 13th most runs per game and b) their pitchers are having a very difficult time getting outs in high-leverage situations. In these important, game-defining moments, the pitching staff is wilting.
Clutch is a handy little stat that compares a player or team’s performance in high-leverage situations to their performance in all other situations. It compares a player or team to itself, not the rest of the league. San Diego pitching is near the bottom of the Clutch leaderboard, which means its pitching staff performs worse in high-leverage situations than at all other times:
30. Miami Marlins: -3.22
29. Los Angeles Angels: -2.93
28. San Diego Priests: -1.66
27. Colorado Rockies: -1.63
…
1. Oakland Athletics: +2.48 (!)
The Angels, Marlins and Rockies are not the company you want to keep when it comes to pitchers who get big results in important situations. Closer Robert Suarez has been great. The rest of San Diego’s bullpen was hit or miss and posted one of the worst win probability numbers in the game. Which, of course, means that they are reducing the team’s probability of winning, which is not good.
Bogaerts and Machado make a lot of money and don’t perform as expected. The 22-23 start depends on them more than anyone else. They are not the only ones to blame. GM AJ Preller has built a weak bench, the middle of the bullpen is iffy, and there is a general lack of depth that is obvious when you look at what amounts to a roster of stars and players on a nightly basis.
A year ago, the Padres fell two games out of a postseason berth, in large part because they went 9-23 in one-run games and 2-12 in extra-inning games. They are doing better in those games this year, but only slightly: 4-6 in one-run games and 1-0 in extra-inning games. This is a return to normality after an atypical improvement in 2023, which is more than legitimate.
In short, the Padres need to be better at everything. Offense, defense, pitching, base running, decision making, you name it. Bogaerts and Machado producing like the high-level performers they are paid to do would mask a lot of flaws, but the Padres have more problems than those two. They have played .500 baseball for nearly 14 months.
