It doesn’t take much to keep me interested in baseball
and the Padres but things aren’t looking that good up to this point and
that’s a fact. I had
predicted there would be concerns about the pitching and it has really let the
Padres down. Honestly though,
it’s not just the pitching.
All of the errors haven’t helped and now injuries are starting to
pile up. Khalil
Greene will certainly be on injured reserve, Dave Roberts is coming off, but for how long?
I predict (again) that he’ll be on and off all season but it
doesn’t matter. Nady deserves
to stay in the lineup and Roberts can be a pinch runner at this point. Pinch run for whom
though is another question. You
have to be with striking distance to put him in and that’s also
worrisome. Last year, the Pads were
great at putting up a ‘Win’ in the close games but this year is a
different story – there just haven’t been that many close games and
most of those games have ended up in the loss column.
I had predicted the Pads would finish second and I’m
thankful that there are still a lot of games left, but it’s not looking
good after two weeks. I suspect
there are a lot of people with one foot off the bandwagon already and I have to
admit that I’m seriously worried.
The foot is twitching but over the years I’ve hung on and
I’ll hang on again. It sure
is easier though when you have something to hang on to. Even the years the Pads were terrible,
they’d still beat up on the Dodgers but not this year.
I’m heading out on vacation for two weeks and maybe
upon my return things will be better.
Maybe having Roberts back will help, but where are you going to play
him? For Greene to go down again
has got to have the Padres worried too.
Let’s hope that he’s not a perpetual injury issue and I fear
he’s got the sophomore jinx going – lots of errors and now a broken
finger.
Pitching? What
pitching? I mentioned a few weeks
before the end of spring training that I was worried about the pitchers not
picking it up towards the end. We
still don’t seem to have a number 5 starter (and maybe not even a number
4 at this point) but there’s plenty of blame to go around so we
can’t place it all on pitching.
Look at the Padre pitching ERA (with a min 11 innings pitched). Peavy and Eaton have a respectable 1.32
and 3.24 ERA respectfully but the Padres third best in ERA, Woody Williams has
a 7.47 ERA. Huh? The league average is 4.42. The bullpen still seems strong despite
Hoffman’s first appearance but he has an ERA of 13.50. There just isn’t much good news
except that it still is early and one good outing at this point could turn it
around. Conversely … we
won’t go there, that’s one of those half empty thoughts.
On the bright side though, there has been some streaks of
hitting that have me optimistic but until the pitchers step up and the defense
quits giving up errors, it’s going to be a long season. Seeing some homeruns flying out of Petco
was great. The Pads had a chance these
first few weeks to make a statement in the division. A lot of divisional games could mean
they’d be setting on the top looking up – the glass would be half
full. Instead, we’ve got a
mediocre start and things keep getting worse and I’d say the glass is
half empty. Other good points are
that the Yankees are doing terrible so that makes me smile a little but I had
hoped that the Giants and Doggers would have a bad start.
Oh well, I’ll keep the faith and while I’m away,
I’ll try to keep my glass half empty!
Kevin can be reached at: kevinmcintyre@yahoo.com