Padres Daily: Imagine, a fun win; defending, explaining Hosmer; quick is good

Good morning,

The Padres won. By a lot.

They scored in their final two at-bats and pulled away for a 10-2 victory over the Houston Astros. (Here is my game story, which largely focuses on another fine start by Joe Musgrove and his working toward one of the best seasons a Padres pitcher has ever had.)

Weird how much fun it looked like the Padres were having near the end.

“You definitely felt it,” Jayce Tingler said.

There is no debating the Padres have looked flat lately. They have played boring, losing baseball. They have not been having fun.

As we have discussed here a few times, there is a danger in assigning too much importance or interpretation to a team’s demeanor when it is in a losing skid.

It’s pretty simple.

“It looks better when you win,” Austin Nola noted yesterday afternoon.

The Padres didn’t look all that jovial for much of the first 6½ innings last night.

Then suddenly, it was all Swagg Chain, dancing, jumping and laughing. Like old times.

Hmm. What changed?

Two-run homers by Manny Machado and Wil Myers in the seventh inning and Fernando Tatis Jr. in the eighth turned a two-run game into a rout.

Not too difficult to discern the chicken or the egg there.

“Everybody always says that when teams are struggling, you’ve just got to go out there and have fun,” Myers said. “Going 0-for-4 is not fun. You can’t pretend to have fun when you’re going 0-for-4. You can’t pretend to have fun when you’re having bad at-bats. You can’t pretend to have fun when you’re losing. Winning breeds having fun. At the end of the day, there’s a lot of times here in the big leagues, there’s games that aren’t fun and you have to grind them out, and that’s just the way it goes. You can’t just go out there and have fun and expect results.

“I think that’s the biggest misconception from fans and anybody else, the fact that having fun leads to hits. A lot of it is grinding at-bats out. You saw the smiles towards the end of the game when we were up eight runs, but still during that time I feel like we were grinding out at-bats. And you didn’t see necessarily the smiles as much. It was more of the focus. … It’s really about grinding out at-bats. I mean, that’s the way it is. Obviously, that leads to smiles. But at the end of the day, it’s about grinding out at-bats.”

Last night was the Padres’ largest margin of victory since they beat the Washington Nationals 24-8 on July 16. It was their first 10-run game since July 17, also against the Nationals. Heading into last night, the Padres had won just 16 times in 40 games since then, and just six of the victories were decided by more than three runs.

That’s because the Padres haven’t been scoring much, and they haven’t been scoring in more than a couple innings per game.

In their most sustained collective slump of the season, the Padres have batted .207 while going 6-15 since Aug. 11. Last night was just the second time in that span they scored in both of their final two at-bats. Both games were victories. They have scored after the fifth inning in just 13 of the games, including four of the victories. They have scored in three or more innings just six times, four of those ending up victories.

Said Myers: “I think that’s one thing that we did today that we haven’t done recently is continue to add runs on, some daggers late in the game.”

Fun.

A little more on Hos’ play

Padres first base coach Wayne Kirby got into it with some fans who were yelling at Eric Hosmer in the dugout during last night’s game. The fans were letting Hosmer know they didn’t like the way they felt he played Friday night, essentially accusing him of not trying.

Kirby told the fans to stop multiple times while defending Hosmer. Kirby seemed to be somewhat light-hearted the first time he yelled at the fans. The second time, he was stern and threatened to have them ejected from the ballpark.

As for the particular play that riled up many fans in Friday’s fourth inning, I spent time before last night’s game asking baseball people about what the reality was on a play in which it looked very much like Hosmer had not hustled to cover first base.

After talking with a number of men who have forgotten more baseball than most of us will ever know, it seems a somewhat qualified critique of the play in the fourth inning was warranted. As I wrote yesterday, Hosmer did not get back to cover the bag as quickly as he could have. This is a pennant race. That play could have been made.

That said, it was the responsibility of the pitcher to cover first base, especially with Hosmer positioned deep at the start of the play and considering Hosmer initially made a move to try to catch the line drive. So, in essence, Hosmer was the fall guy there because he turned, saw pitcher Jake Arrieta wasn’t coming over and tried to cover the bag anyway.

A couple complications arose when second baseman Ha-seong Kim made the nice running grab of the line drive in right field. First, Arrieta is recovering from a hamstring injury. Second, he is new to the Padres, so he is not used to an infielder stationed in shallow right field making that kind of play.

It could be argued it was a coaching gaffe to not have prepared Arrieta and/or Hosmer for such a play, making sure they were aware of coverage assignments.

Quick work

Tim Hill and Pierce Johnson played big roles in quick appearances last night.

Hill relieved Musgrove with one out and a runner on first base in the sixth inning. Hill’s first pitch to Kyle Tucker was grounded to the right side, where Adam Frazier fielded it to start an inning-ending double play.

Dinelson Lamet started the seventh inning and alternated walking two batters with getting two outs before he was replaced by Pierce Johnson. It took Johnson two pitches to get dangerous Alex Bregman on a fly ball out to center field.

“For as much as they’ve done all year, it’s nice for them to be able to get those quick outings and to come in and be sharp right out of the gate,” Musgrove said.

Both appearances protected a 4-2 lead with the tying runner at the plate.

Said Tingler: “I really thought (both) turned or maintained the momentum in our dugout.”

Tidbits

• The Padres improved to 12-1 when Tatis and Machado have multiple hits. They are 4-0 when both hit home runs. Both were 2-for-4 last night.

• Tatis also walked twice. It was the first time he reached base four times in a game since Aug. 15, his first game back from his most recent stay on the injured list. He has 13 such games this season, most on the team.

• Last night was just the second time in 21 games the Padres have overcome a two-run deficit and won.

• Nola’s single in the second inning gave him his 28th RBI of the season (in just 138 at-bats and with just one home run). He is batting .500 (21-for-42) with runners in scoring position.

• Tommy Pham batted cleanup and went 0-for-3 with a walk in his first start in a week. He did make a sliding catch in left field and caught two other line drives.

• Jake Cronenworth was 1-for-4 with a walk. He also had a groundout with a 106.7 mph exit velocity, the hardest ball he has put in play since Aug. 12. Cronenworth is batting .178 (13-for-73) since Aug. 13.

• The Padres remain a half-game behind the Reds in the race for the National League’s second wild card spot. Since dropping out of playoff position for the first time in four months on Aug. 22, the Padres have won just once on a day the Reds lost. (They also won on a day the Reds didn’t play.)

All right, that’s it for me. Day game today.

Talk to you tomorrow.