One hundred games into a 162-game season, the San Diego Padres were 50-50. They were getting ready to burp away another year of the primes of Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado, not to mention the outlier season of Jurickson Profar’s career.
On Saturday night, they blanked Arizona 5-0 in Phoenix to improve to 43-18 since falling to .500 on a July evening in Cleveland. They did so with half the starting lineup taking a night off and a fill-in starter from Triple-A El Paso, Randy Vasquez, allowing just one hit to a Diamondbacks team desperate for a win.
“There’s no question this club, regardless of who we put out there, is going to compete,” said first-year manager Mike Shildt.
What a 180-degree turn from last year, when San Diego folded at the first sign of adversity and consistently failed to win the close ones. Bob Melvin managed one of the game’s most star-studded rosters to an 82-80 record and missed the playoffs in what was likely the most disappointing season in the history of a franchise that knows a lot about disappointing seasons.
This is not one of those seasons, which is why you might want to lay a few pennies on the Padres if you’re looking for a cheap value pick in the National League.
Lots of “smart” money will be wagered on the Los Angeles Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies. But Los Angeles’ pitching staff is thinner than a runway model, and Philadelphia has been a sub-.500 team in the last 65 games.
Which brings us back to why San Diego is your NL sleeper. Not only is it playing the best ball of any of the contenders since mid-July, it also might have the fewest weaknesses of any of the playoff teams.
They might not have starting pitching as good as the Phillies, but Yu Darvish, Joe Musgrove, Dylan Cease and Michael King are a solid rotation. Cease has more strikeouts than anyone not named Tarik Skubal or Chris Sale, while Darvish and Musgrove are finally healthy after missing long chunks of the season. King was a revelation, pitching to a 2.95 earned run average in 31 starts during his first full year in an MLB rotation.
The Padres can match bullpens with anyone. Even with his September slump, Robert Suarez notched 36 saves and nine wins. Tanner Scott and Jason Adam are excellent set-up men, while Jeremiah Estrada and Adrian Morejon could close for many MLB teams.
Offensively, San Diego has somehow gotten better after trading Juan Soto, an act of prestidigitation that might allow general manager A.J. Preller to keep his job after last year’s flop.
Its lineup has more depth from top to bottom, illustrated by 17 homers from No. 9 hitter Kyle Higashioka. It leads MLB in batting average and is top 10 in on-base, slugging percentage and runs. It also boasts less swing-and-miss than any lineup in the bigs, posting the fewest strikeouts.
Think that doesn’t mean anything? Want to look at one of the hidden reasons why Houston has been good for a decade? It also doesn’t strike out a lot. Despite the baseball nerds’ insistence that strikeouts don’t mean anything, whiffing gives a team one less chance to make an opponent handle the ball.
Remember Mookie Wilson’s grounder that skirted through Bill Buckner’s legs in 1986? Doesn’t happen if Wilson doesn’t make contact. Putting a ball in play always trumps swinging from your tuckus and missing by a foot.
That described the Padres’ 2023.
It won’t describe their 2024 playoff run.
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