SAN DIEGO – The Padres Monday night returned home after a disappointing road trip. Blake Snell was on the mound for the Friars and he set the tone early. He worked 5 innings with 7 strikeouts. He did find himself to be a little shaky sometimes as he did walk 4 and gave up 7 hits but worked around it. In the very first inning, Xander Bogaerts went deep for a 3-run home run off the Angels Jamie Barria.
After that point, they did not look back adding 7 runs to make the final score of 10-3. Tatis Jr. was great throughout the game as he also knocked in 3 runs including a 2 run triple.
Here are three takeaways from the game:
Fernando looking to prove voters wrong
Tatis Jr. Sunday was not named to the all-star reserves with his teammate Juan Soto. Overall he’s had more than a solid year but it seems like his early-season suspension might have cost him his spot. There is still time for him to be an injury replacement but not being named as of now might have added some fuel to the fire on his performance today. He went 3-5 with 3 RBIs and scored twice. He has been playing great but this extra fire is something this team needs as a group going into the 2nd half of the season.
The bottom half of the lineup struggles along with the bullpen
While today was an overall good game for the Padres there were still many flaws with the performance. While it is extremely rare to have a perfect showing there are still signs of inconsistency in the team. Today the 7-8-9 hitters went a whopping 0-10. The top half of the lineup was huge today but you will need at least some production from the bottom half of the lineup.
Now, today the bullpen was asked to go 4 innings with a 4 run lead. In the first inning the bullpen was asked to go into the game Domingo Tapia in his first game back in the majors in nearly of month gave up 3 hits and 2 runs while only getting 1 out. Keeping leads has big a huge flaw of the Padres this season and today could have been a repeat of history if the bats didn’t have the outburst they had. Out of all games to put him in Josh Hader closed the door entering the game with a 7-run lead. It will be interesting to monitor if he will be available tomorrow as he did throw 19 pitches. More likely than not he should be able to pitch if needed.
Putting two and two together
Today was one of the first times that the starting pitching was great along with great hitting in this recent span of games. Blake Snell provided the boost that the bats needed. By the lineup getting out to a big lead Snell was able to ride that wave into the rest of his start. Today the Padres had an extremely high rate of scoring the runners in scoring position. The only way this game will mean something, in the long run, is if they are able to keep this going in tomorrow’s performance. Every time as of late when the team looks like they are turning a corner offensively they go out and get shutout or struggle significantly. It will be a very tough test for the Padres as they will face the best player in baseball in Shohei Ohtani. Juan Soto seemed to be very confident that his team will have Shohei struggling. “He’s going to have trouble facing this lineup tomorrow.,” Soto said.
The first pitch tomorrow for the Fourth of July game will be at 3:40 PST on TBS
