ST. LOUIS -- After Monday night’s series-opening loss to the Cardinals, Padres left fielder Gavin Sheets noted the disappointment in not forcing the offensive issue with a few more at-bats that might’ve forced some of the St. Louis relievers into the game.
“Maybe get in the bullpen, at least make [St. Louis closer Riley] O’Brien throw, which would’ve been huge,” he opined.
The theory is undeniable. The reality -- 16 innings thrown by Cardinals starters over the first two games of the set and only seven Padres baserunners -- is untenable. Andre Pallante carried a perfect game into the fifth inning one night after Dustin May carried one into the seventh, and the Padres dropped the series with a 3-2 loss Tuesday at Busch Stadium.
“There was a lot of empty innings where we just didn’t have anything going on,” manager Craig Stammen said. “[Pallante] threw well. We’ve just got to be a little bit better against him, and fight him a little harder earlier in the game and get that pitch count up so that we can make even more progress later in the game.”
While Pallante thrived, Michael King had to grind. He completed just 4 1/3 innings and allowed three runs on five hits and three walks. It took him 93 pitches to record those 13 outs; May needed the same number of pitches to retire 24 Padres in the series opener.
“Just had to wait me out,” King assessed. “I was nowhere near the zone on a lot of those pitches. Just uncompetitive ball-to-ball pitches. I’d say that they were able to kind of hone in on the middle, get some hits when I was there. Just not good enough.”
It took Pallante one fewer pitch than that, 92, to complete seven innings in the second game of the set. His outing was interrupted by a Ty France RBI single in the fifth and a Jackson Merrill RBI double in the sixth, but both two-out rallies were terminated shortly thereafter.
France was thrown out trying to take second base after the Cardinals threw home in an attempt to nab Samad Taylor, and Merrill could only watch from second as Manny Machado struck out to end the threat in the sixth.
Taylor’s single with two outs in the fifth – coming after a deflection by Pallante and a strong throw by Masyn Winn, with the safe call upheld after a review – represented the first San Diego hitter to reach base in this series within the first two turns of the lineup.
The balance between the necessary aggression in attacking Major League starters when they come into the zone and being patient enough to wait out more hittable offerings has been out of whack for the Padres for the duration of the series, and left them scrambling for any and all strings of opportunity to which they could cling.
“It’s hard when we’ve had multiple 1-2-3 innings,” Taylor said, and indeed the Padres have turned in 14 such innings in their 18 turns at bat through the first two games of the series. “You try to just battle in the box to get our pitcher some rest on the bench and then just go from there, but over the last couple days we’ve had quite a few 1-2-3 innings. But we’ll keep grinding, and it’ll turn around.”
Taylor flashed a bunt to the Cardinals’ defense at least once in each of his three plate appearances, and stole second base against Pallante and Ivan Herrera just before France’s single that scored the first Padres run of the series. It was a fair demonstration of a player looking for any edge at the plate in the face of team-wide struggles.
“In my head, I knew I had to do something to keep the inning going,” Taylor acknowledged. “It’s little things like that. As all the baseball world knows, 1-2-3 innings kill everything. But like I said, we’re going to keep grinding, and good things will turn out.”
The Padres piled up 17 runs in the three games comprising their first stop on this three-city trip, in Baltimore. It was a welcome respite for an offense that has consistently struggled to put together repeatable results, but it appears to have gone as quickly as it came.
“It gets to the point where it’s a little frustrating, and we’ve got to do something about it,” Stammen said. “I know the guys are putting in all the work early. We’re doing every little possible thing we can do to break out of this and get our hitters hitting, but so far we haven’t figured it out yet.”