Padres On First Salvage Mission In 3 Weeks: Pads vs. Giants 5/19
By Friar Wire
By Bob Scanlan
Well…it was fun while it lasted! For the past five series, the Padres came out with at least a tie, and four times claimed the series outright. They had not played that consistent a run of baseball since 2014, but their streak of not losing a series came to a halt last night thanks to the right arm of a familiar foe, Johnny Cueto. After using the Alexei Ramirez Cueto Kryptonite early in the ballgame, as we discussed in yesterday’s Pregame Preview , to give the Friars an early 1–0 lead, Cueto went into shutdown mode. And, despite a solid effort by Drew Pomeranz, Cueto walked off the mound 9 innings later with a 2–1 victory for his Giants. It was his second CG win over the Padres this season, and third in his last six outings against the Friars.
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The Padres will try to salvage the final game of the 3-game set and avoid the dreaded sweep by…
- Waiting out Samardzija — There is only one team in baseball this year that’s scored more than
- 3 runs in a game off Giants’ starter Jeff Samadzija — it was the Padres back on April 27. How did they do it? Step one: by forcing the hard-throwing right hander to bring his pitches up in the zone. In the first two innings he tried to stay down, but the Padres didn’t go after them, and when he didn’t get some early calls, ultimately felt forced to raise his sights to keep from pitching behind the count all day. Step two: by crushing the ball once it was up in the zone. Step one is meaningless if you don’t follow through with step two. The Pads capitalized when the opportunity was created and they will need to apply the same formula in this second matchup with him tonight.
- Stifling the bottom order damage — In the first two games of this series, it hasn’t been the
- heart of the Giants batting order that’s hurt the Padres. It’s been the bottom half, where the lineup has 10 of their 18 hits in the series and has driven in all their runs. The crusher, of course, was the 3-run HR by Brandon Crawford in game one with the pitcher on deck. In most of those at bats the Padres pitchers were behind in the count when the damage occurred. So, as always, don’t put cripple hitters (guys who mainly do damage when they are ahead in the count) in that king position. Challenge them early and put them on the defensive.
- Exorcising their final series game hex — The Padres have not fared well in the last game of
- the series so far this season. In fact, they’ve lost 11 of their 12 series finale matchups. The only final game they’ve won was against the Cubs on the last road trip. There’s no magic to it. If the Friars don’t like it, they need to play better. Oh, yes of course there is always Jobu, but honestly a couple of early runs and some first pitch strikes to the bottom of the order might be just as effective.
