Padres’ offense takes another wild swing in satisfying sweep of Mariners
SEATTLE — The public messaging from all corners of the group has constantly been that the Padres’ offense shall be positive.
Again and once more, they are saying it. And they consider it. They need to.
But that in no approach displays their strategy has been to simply anticipate it to get higher.
“We were like (a week) in,” supervisor Craig Stammen mentioned, “and we were trying to figure it out.”
He spoke on Friday afternoon earlier than the Padres went out and seemed for 3 video games like a group that was not ranked at or close to the underside of the key leagues in nearly each important offensive class.
Illustrating the swings a season can take — and the way shortly — the Padres hit the ball throughout T-Mobile Park in a three-game sweep of the Mariners.
“Lo and behold,” hitting coach Steven Souza Jr. mentioned Sunday night time, “we drive the ball when we don’t try to do too much.”
That has been the interior messaging for a while, and it was reiterated with some further intentionality earlier than this sequence.
“Exactly what we’ve been trying to figure out here over the last month or so,” Stammen mentioned. “And we finally got it right for a couple days.”
As their offense has principally ebbed and generally flowed this season, Padres hitting coaches and others in the group examined all the things from how they’re presenting data and what data they’re presenting and regarded organizing hitters’ conferences otherwise and/or altering the terminology they use in speaking with hitters.
This is the place it will get tough.
Souza, the Padres’ tenth hitting coach in 13 seasons, will get an abundance of scrutiny. And he wears it.
“I’m the head hitting coach,” he mentioned Friday. “So I’m responsible for it.”
That is one thing that ranks Stammen, amongst others.
“It’s not about him as a hitting coach,” Stammen mentioned. “It’s about all of us collectively. It’s our hitting department. It’s all of us. … We’re struggling. Who is to blame? We’re all to blame. … Our performance, the buck stops with me, because I’m the manager.”
Nick Castellanos was requested about Souza on Saturday and was emphatic in his protection.
“Steven Souza is someone who cares extremely much,” Castellanos mentioned. “He’s somebody that’s by no means going to indicate as much as something that issues to him not ready. He has all of the suitable data. He goes above and past to provide it to all of us. And now it is on us how we take that data and (how) we will mildew it into our particular person kinds of hitting that works for us. I do not like when hitting coaches get loads of blame. … Hitting is the toughest factor to do in sports activities, and a hitting coach is essentially the most unstable job that you would be able to have in a baseball group.”
Manny Machado pointed the finger on the males who’ve bats in their arms:
“It’s the players,” he mentioned. “The players on the field hit or don’t hit. We get the information, and then we do what we do with it.”
There has been some concern raised internally that Padres hitters have at occasions been caught off-guard by how some beginning pitchers have attacked them. Most have mentioned so in personal. Stammen has publicly acknowledged it has occurred.
The Padres are one of 12 groups who’ve hit aid pitchers higher than starters this season. But no group has had the disparity they’ve — with a .209 common and .608 OPS in opposition to starters, each worst in the majors, and a .241 common (14th) and .734 OPS (eighth) in opposition to relievers getting into Sunday.
“I really don’t have a good answer on that one,” Souza mentioned. “…You can get slightly impatient as a result of the starter just isn’t going to do the identical factor each time. And in case you’re asking the hitting employees to say, ‘Hey, that is precisely what he’ll do,’ that is unimaginable.’ But we give them particular person recreation plans, and provides them general. And I believe for almost all of this yr, they’ve finished a extremely, actually good job. “I just think this is a stretch of baseball.”
By that, he meant that over the last few weeks, the Padres had gotten away from their prescribed offensive assault.
According to a number of individuals who had been current, the hitters’ assembly earlier than Friday’s recreation included a agency admonishment by Souza that that they had strayed from being disciplined and had been making an attempt to do an excessive amount of. He reminded the assembled gamers that that they had been among the many league leaders in hard-hit balls and line drives the primary month of the season.
“We kind of got away from that a little bit,” he would say later. “We kind of swung it a little bit more and chased a little bit more, got a little bit greedy at times.”
The message appeared to have come by.
On Friday, the Padres hit 12 line drives, tying a season excessive set on April 5 and twice as many as that they had hit in all however 5 of their earlier 24 video games. The 10 balls they put into play with an exit velocity of 100 mph or extra that night time had been greater than in any of their earlier 27 video games, and simply three of these had been floor balls.
Saturday, they hit three dwelling runs for the primary time at sea stage in their previous 27 video games at season stage.
They hit eight extra line drives Sunday. And with 10 hits in the 8-3 victory, that they had 26 hits in the sequence, their most in any three-game stretch this month.
The weekend solely fortified the assumption that issues will flip.
“It just kind of happens,” Souza mentioned. “Obviously, we don’t sit back and just say, ‘Hey, it’s gonna turn.’ We keep working and have a direction. But at the end of the day, my faith has not wavered in this group. History says that they’re going to be just fine.”
