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SAN DIEGO – The Padres spent most of August scrambling to fill innings, with injuries and inconsistency in their starting rotation forcing them to look up and down for capable arms.
When does it end? Well, the Padres are hoping it ended on Sunday afternoon with their demoralizing 7-4 loss to the Phillies at Petco Park – a loss that saw them lose a game behind the Reds in the Wild Card race. of the National League, apart from the “if the season ended today. »Photo of the playoffs for the first time since June 17th.
Ahead of the game, Yu Darvish started a paddock session and is set to return, possibly this week against the Dodgers. Chris Paddack has been playing aggressive wrestling, and his comeback is on the horizon as well. Maybe the Padres’ rotation will start to look like a rotation again – made with one-off starts and impromptu days in the bullpen.
“There’s just something about who’s going to be the starting pitcher the next day,” said veteran reliever Craig Stammen, who opened the competition on Sunday.
A return to normal cannot come soon enough. Because what happened on the mound on Sunday afternoon offered the perfect encapsulation of everything that went wrong with the Padres’ pitching staff over the past month.
San Diego passed up the opportunity to add starting pitchers at the trade deadline, despite its dire need. The Padres missed their two main targets, Max Scherzer and José Berríos, then decided the prices were too high to go elsewhere.
Elsewhere was then Rangers right-hander Kyle Gibson, who traveled to Philadelphia under a deadline deal. He pitched eight innings of a one-run Sunday afternoon. Trent Grisham scored the Padres’ lone run in the first set, coming home on a sacrifice fly after a starting brace.
Meanwhile, the Padres were once again forced to scramble to fill the innings. Stammen threw two innings of the ball without a goal. But southpaw Ryan Weathers, who moved to the bullpen after four consecutive difficult starts, followed with another misfire.
Weathers allowed three runs in two innings and saw his ERA jump to 5.27. With no other option, the Padres were forced to endure the hardships of a 21-year-old rookie.
“That’s what we have,” said manager Jayce Tingler. “What we talked to Ryan about right after the trade deadline was, ‘You’re going to have the ball. You will take the ball. And we will grow.
The Phillies opened the game with three homers over Miguel Diaz, taking a 7-1 lead. The Padres scored three runs late in the ninth inning, but Grisham struck out with Fernando Tatis Jr. in the circle on the bridge as a potential tie.
Failed to capitalize on the momentum from their spectacular victory on Saturday, the Padres surprisingly enter the final six weeks of their season in pursuit of the playoff leaders. In those six weeks, they will face the Dodgers and Giants a total of 19 times, starting this week with three against Los Angeles at Petco Park.
“For some reason it allowed us to get the most out of it,” Tingler said, and he’s not wrong – the Padres are 11-8 against the two teams ahead of them in the West. NL this season.
As for the pitching situation, it could finally clear up. When the Padres added starters to the deadline, suffice to say they couldn’t have imagined that. But Paddack changed his left oblique just hours after the deadline had passed, and Darvish suffered a recurrence of his tightness in his lower back the following week.
Add the Weathers struggles to the mix, and the Padres have been sent to scramble. Blake Snell and Joe Musgrove were suddenly the only remaining members of the starting rotation. The Padres have resorted to signing a struggling Jake Arrieta and deploying bullpen several days per week. They hope those days are over.
Darvish is expected to return to rotation against the Dodgers on Tuesday or Thursday. Paddack’s return could follow at some point on the team’s next trip, to Anaheim or Arizona.
“With the guys we’ve injured, that’s the way it has to be,” Stammen said. “We have to understand it and piece it together. These guys are coming. Paddack and Darvish in good health, that will definitely get us back to a normal way of doing things.
“But until then, we just have to find a way. There are no excuses. There is no rhyme or reason. We just have to find a way. It’s that time of the season when whatever your arm feels, whatever your brain feels – you have to figure it out. “
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