SAN DIEGO -- Late Tuesday night, after a fourth loss in five games to start the season, new Padres manager Craig Stammen approached bench coach Randy Knorr with a plea.
Stammen felt he wasn’t getting his lineup quite right. He was exasperated. His offense had underperformed, and he was exhausting himself trying to fit the right pieces in the right places. So Knorr volunteered his own lineup.
A day later, the Padres were celebrating a 7-1 victory over the Giants at Petco Park, with a season high in runs and hits.
“We’re riding with Randy right now,” Stammen said.
Of course, Stammen’s telling isn’t entirely true. Yes, Knorr volunteered a lineup. But Stammen himself made a couple of tweaks. For all intents and purposes, it was still his lineup. But those changes paid dividends.
Fernando Tatis Jr. was back in the leadoff spot. A red-hot Ramón Laureano was up to No. 5. Jake Cronenworth and Gavin Sheets, a pair of lefties, were stacked at 6 and 7, respectively. All four made significant contributions in the Padres’ best offensive showing of the season.
“This is the kind of baseball that we expect to play,” Sheets said. “This is the game that looks like our identity.”
The reality is: It was never so much about the lineup as the performances of the hitters in that lineup. The Padres had opened the season with five straight games in which they’d scored three runs or fewer.
They needed a day like Wednesday.
“Today,” Stammen said, “was an example of what we could be, the type of team that we expected -- and have.”
There are no must-win games on April 1. The season is long, and the Padres could very well have survived a 1-5 homestand. Good teams go through 1-5 stretches all the time.
But, well, you’d rather go 2-4, wouldn’t you? Especially if it means avoiding a sweep at the hands of a division rival. And, sure enough, the mood felt a whole lot different after a finale like Wednesday’s.
“Obviously it’s five games,” Sheets said. “But you tell yourself you’ve got to get it going. ... Today was a big win.”
Sheets opened his season 0-for-13 with six strikeouts, before hitting a bloop single in the ninth on Tuesday night. That may have opened the floodgates. He doubled twice on Wednesday, then worked a walk during the Padres’ four-run eighth inning.
Machado led off that eighth inning with a double before Laureano’s second home run of the season. Afterward, Laureano made it clear he isn’t all that concerned with where he hits.
“They have a ball, they try to throw strikes,” Laureano said when asked for his lineup preference. “I try to hit it. That’s all I’m thinking.”
The sample is undeniably small. It’s one homestand. On paper, this still looks like a potent offense. It’s also a veteran-laden offense -- one that isn’t going to overreact to the results of five or six games.
“Not frustrating at all,” said Machado (who’d been asked his level of frustration). “It would’ve been frustrating if we weren’t having good at-bats. … We’re hitting the ball hard, having good at-bats as a group. Obviously, we would like to score more runs. Obviously. But the at-bats are there.”
Right-hander Nick Pivetta set the tone, back to his usual dominant self, allowing just one hit over five scoreless innings. The fastball command that eluded him on Opening Day? It was back, in full force.
Pivetta ripped off fastballs at a 68% clip and put them wherever he wanted. He averaged a whopping 21 inches of carry (induced vertical break) on the pitch, too -- the driving force behind his eight strikeouts.
“It was just me being me and getting consistently back in the zone, attacking with my heater,” Pivetta said.
That performance gave the offense some breathing room. The Padres found themselves behind early in each of the first two games of the series. On Wednesday, they scratched across runs on a pair of Giants errors, taking an early lead. Then, they broke it open late.
Mason Miller, who entered when that lead was only two in the eighth inning, picked up a four-out save, and the Padres finished their season-opening homestand at 2-4. Which isn’t what they anticipated. But it sure felt better than 1-5.
“We’re going to play better here at Petco,” Stammen said. “That’s what we’ve done in the past, and we’re going to continue to do it.”
“This [homestand],” he added, “was probably an outlier.”