Padres Series Recap: Dodgers Show Dominance Over Padres

The MLB baseball season can be a long and complicated journey. It is the All-Star break and we have just reached the half way point in the MLB season. But the thing is that it is not… technically the Padres have now played 89 games in this season. So we are well underway into the second half of the season.

The San Diego Padres have just lost three out of four games to the Dodgers to end the “first half”. There were several negatives in this series. But there were also many positives to look at as well. The big positive being the starting pitching.

Besides Andrew Cashner, the most earned runs allowed by a starting pitcher in this series was three. That is really impressive especially against the Dodgers. But in order to generate wins all factors must be flawless or as close to it as possible. Well that didn’t quite happen in this series. Well after you read this recap, forget about this lost season for a while. Go out to enjoy the All-Star festivities. Some of you may have already gotten a head start on that. Honestly though enjoy the last few moments before we go back to worrying about the Padres.

Game 1: The Flawless

Game one of this series was a flawless game for the San Diego Padres. Every factor was an absolute treat in this game. Let’s start with the pitching. Drew Pomeranz was lights out and showed just why he deserved that place in the 2016 All Star Game. Pomeranz had already had a magnificent start at Dodger Stadium earlier this season. He had thrown eight innings and had only allowed a run. The thing was the offense could not do anything to help. Therefore that game would be lost. Well this time around Pomeranz would get a much better helping hand from the offense. For starters Pomeranz would have an impeccable start. Drew would throw seven shutout innings in which he would only allow two hits. Pomeranz would flat-out dominate on the mound. The next factor that would also work out in this game would be the offense.

The offense would provide more than enough runs to win this game. They would manage to score six total runs. All of the runs would come off of Hyun-Jin Ryu. The lefty was making his first major league start since 2014. The Padres would manage to take full advantage of that. There would really be no key performers offensively in this game. It really was more of a team effort. All six runs would be scored by six different players. Melvin Upton Jr. would start it off with a lead off home run in the top of the first inning. Drew Pomeranz would then drive in Alex Dickerson with a single in the second inning. In the fourth inning, Alexei Ramirez would drive in Derek Norris with a double. In the fifth Yangervis Solarte would drive in Matt Kemp with a double as well. Finally in the same inning Alex Dickerson would drive in Solarte with a triple. As you can clearly see this was a complete team effort. Six different players would drive in the runs and five different players would score. This is what all the great teams do. This is how the Padres must play in order to achieve success.

Game 2: The Ugly

Overall this wasn’t the worst game ever for the Padres. There was just one factor that came in and spoiled everything, Andrew Cashner. The big right-handed would have an abysmal outing in this game. Cashner would only pitch two and two-thirds innings and allow eight runs to cross the plate. I mean that is just inexcusable. At the very least he should have ate up a few more innings and saved the bullpen. To add to it he would allow four home runs in the game. So not only would he allow eight runs, but he would get absolutely demolished as well. Offensively the Padres would actually look quite good. The Padres offense would manage to score six runs in the game again.

The player of the game for the Padres definitely had to be Melvin Upton Jr. He would have another one of those brilliant games. Melvin would go 4-5 in the game with three RBI. The RBI would come from two home runs.  A two-run blast in the second and a solo shot in the fourth. The player of the game in general would turn out to be former Friar, Yasmani Grandal. He would go 5-5 with six RBI. He would ultimately destroy the Padres single-handedly. Grandal would have three home runs in the game. Two, two run blasts and a solo shot. The frustrating thing here being that without Grandal’s homers alone the Padres would have actually won this game. Overall this wasn’t a horrible game because of the offense. But in general it was very frustrating due to Andrew Cashner’s performance.

Game Three: Run Support?

Game three would be another frustrating game for a completely different reason. This time it would be the offense that would let us down. Luis Perdomo would be on the mound and he would look fantastic. In six innings of work he would only allow two earned runs. Perdomo just keeps on looking solid. He definitely has shown that he belongs on this team. Well after scoring 12 runs in two games the Padres would only score three runs in this one. The plague of inconsistency would strike its cold hands on this team once again. Two of those runs would actually come from one man, Yangervis Solarte. He would blast a two-run shot off of Brandon McCarthy. Travis Jankowski would score the only other run of the game for the Padres via an RBI single. Overall this game would have a very fine line between solid and lackluster. Solid being the pitching and lackluster being the offense. Other than that there really isn’t much else to say about this game. It was just a very average performance by both teams.

Game Four: Run Support? (Part 2)

Well the Padres would have an encore of their performance in the final game of the series. The Padres bats would again fail. This time it would be a little worse though as they would only manage to score a run. The pitchers yet gain would do their best. Christian Friedrich would be on the mound in this one. He would have a pretty solid performance. Friedrich would allow three runs in five innings of work. Not an amazing performance. But a solid one that usually ensures you a win. Well not this time. His counterpart, Kenta Maeda would be lights out. Not as good as Pomeranz in game one, but still impressive. Like Pomeranz, Maeda would throw seven innings and allow two hits. However unlike Pomeranz one of those hits would be a solo shot. Derek Norris would provide the meaningless blow that would really result in nothing for this game. Again like game three, there really wasn’t anything to write home about in this game. Overall this was a bad performance for the Padres. The pitching performance by Friedrich really wasn’t enough to save this game. So really this would result in a lost game for the Pads. Quite a meaningless one at that. Well we can now forgot all about the Padres and their struggles. We can forget about who their going to trade for. For just a second. We can now turn our attention to the first All-Star Game in San Diego for some of us. The first ever All-Star Game at Petco Park. We can now just focus on taking a little break from this gruesome reality of a season. Let’s get out there and enjoy all of this. Go Padres!

Francisco Velasco

Francisco, 26, Chula Vista/Tijuana. I have been a Padres fan all my life, did most of the series previews and recaps in the Padres’ 2016 season for EVT. Now I focus more on the local soccer scene. Tijuana Xolos, San Diego Loyal, San Diego Wave.