DENVER -- The 2022 Padres are trying to realize the potential they didn’t realize in 2021. Last year was the year San Diego was seen as the exciting, young and uber-talented team that had a real chance to end the Dodgers’ eight-year hegemony atop the National League West.
But the ’21 Padres were not only supplanted by the Giants, who took that role and knocked the Dodgers off the division throne, but San Diego nose-dived in the second half of the year, finishing below .500.
Last weekend at Petco Park, the Padres were poised to take sole possession of first place in the division thanks to a fantastic first two months of the season. But there was a problem: the last-place Colorado Rockies.
The Padres dropped two of four games against the Rockies thanks to uncharacteristically poor defense and a dearth of offense. While the Dodgers were being swept by the Giants in San Francisco, the Padres just couldn’t take care of business against Colorado.
Fast-forward a week, and the Padres find themselves in a similar situation after losing their fourth straight game against the Rockies, 5-4, on Saturday night. That marked the ninth straight loss for San Diego at Coors Field, and with the Dodgers’ win over the Guardians earlier in the day, the Padres found themselves back in second place.
In what promises to be a dogfight for the division title down the stretch, especially with the Padres hoping to have superstar shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. back in the lineup, the NL West crown could be decided by a handful of games … or fewer. So losses to teams the Padres should beat more often than not might be looked back upon with stinging regret.
“Yeah, for sure,” Manny Machado said when asked whether that would be the case. “But this division is always tough. We’ve been playing against the same players, same pitchers, same staff the last three or four years. They typically know how we play, and we know how they play.
“It’s a tough grind, and you’ve just got to keep grinding it out. This was a tough loss for us, losing the series today.”
For a time Saturday, it looked as though the Padres might break through against Colorado when Machado launched a go-ahead two-run homer to left-center field in the fifth inning, the early NL MVP Award candidate’s 12th of the season. The 463-foot drive was Machado's longest in four seasons with the Padres. But when Machado came to the plate with two runners on and one out in the ninth, trailing by a run, he took a Daniel Bard slider that didn’t slide, right down the middle for strike three.
“He started me off with paint, a good pitch up in the zone, middle,” Machado said. “I should’ve swung at that. Didn’t swing, and then the last one, I thought it was going to break, and it just stayed up. Typical Colorado pitch, but it’s a good pitch by a good pitcher.”
The Padres didn’t do themselves many favors over the first two games of the series, but on the flip side of the coin, there was some bad luck involved. And bad luck and Coors Field do not mix well.
It started with the second batter of the game, Jake Cronenworth, who has been hot at the plate of late. He hit a line drive with a Statcast expected batting average of .720 that was caught by second baseman Brendan Rodgers, who had Cronenworth played perfectly.
In the fourth inning, Trent Grisham smashed a rocket to center field with an exit velocity of 104 mph and an expected batting average of .840. It became a 405-foot flyout. In the eighth, Jorge Alfaro hit a liner to center field with an xBA of .390 that again landed in the glove of center fielder Yonathan Daza.
“Yeah, I think you could look back and think about whether we should have won those games or not, yes or no,” Cronenworth said. “Those bounces, sometimes they get through and sometimes they don’t. That’s baseball. Who knows? Tomorrow we could have 15 bloop singles.”
At this point, whether it’s a screaming line drive or a bloop in front of an outfielder, the Padres will take whatever it takes to beat the Rockies at Coors Field -- especially as they continue to trade first and second place with the Dodgers every few days.
“It’s just one of those things, two tough losses in a row,” Cronenworth said. “We’ll just have to come back tomorrow, come out and win a game.”