Padres on the verge of collapse? Losing streak reaches six games as pitching staff begins to crumble
The house of cards is beginning to collapse in San Diego. The Padres have had baseball's lowest scoring offense all season and now their pitching staff is beginning to crumble. They've allowed 66 runs, including 17 home runs, during a six-game losing streak that has dropped them to .500 for the first time since April 8. San Diego is now 43-43 and has fallen to three games behind the third wild card spot in the National League.
"It's a collective group effort. That's what it's going to take (to get out of it)," Jake Cronenworth said when asked about the losing streak (via MLB.com). "I think we're .500 now. We're not in the position we want to be in. We've got to do something about it. There's got to be a sense of urgency."
The Padres' pitching staff has allowed 17 home runs over its last 6 games, during which they've posted a 10.48 ERA.The Padres have gone 6 straight games without getting at least 5 innings from a starter, tying the longest stretch in franchise history, per @ESPNInsights.
Wednesday's 23-3 loss to the Cubs was an outlier game. Even if we remove that, the Padres have allowed 43 runs in the other five games of their six-game losing streak, or 8.6 per game. They hit three homers and took a 6-0 lead in the second inning against the Dodgers on Thursday, then surrendered 12 runs the rest of the way in what became a 12-7 loss.
The rotation was a question coming into the season and it became an even greater concern when Opening Day starter Nick Pivetta went down with a flexor tendon injury after four starts. It's unclear if he'll return this season. Yu Darvish, Joe Musgrove, and the recently signed Lucas Giolito are all sidelined as well with elbow problems.
San Diego's thinning rotation depth chart currently looks like this:
The league-worst offense can be blamed on underperforming stars, plain and simple. Manny Machado is hitting .192/.278/.409 and has the second-worst batting average among qualified hitters. Jackson Merrill is hitting .212/.271/.349. Xander Bogaerts is hitting .232/.323/.388. Fernando Tatis Jr. has a good batting average (.280) and on-base percentage (.342), but only five homers.
Machado and Merrill both hit home runs early in Thursday's loss, which makes blowing the 6-0 lead especially painful. The stars did their jobs and the pitching staff couldn't hold it.
Look at what Bogaerts, Machado, Merrill, and Tatis have done this season compared to last season. It is a massive drop-off:
Bottom line, either Machado & Co. will hit and the Padres will get enough offense to have a chance to win, or they don't and they won't. Pleasant surprises like Ty France and Samad Taylor will only take you so far. Your best players need to be your best players, and San Diego's top four position players have been a collective disappointment as we enter July.
The Padres have a strong bullpen and baseball's most dominant closer in Mason Miller, but the rotation and especially the offense are lacking. Their strategy is to scratch out a few runs early, get just enough starting pitching and then smother the other team with Miller and others in the late innings. The Padres operate with a razor-thin margin of error and they've been on the wrong side of it lately.
FanGraphs puts San Diego's postseason odds at 14.5% at the moment. They were 27.9% on Opening Day and peaked at 53.0% on April 25, when the Padres were 18-8 and a season-high 10 games over .500. San Diego is 25-35 with a minus-58 run differential since then.