There was hope in last night's game, for the briefest of moments when our guys had Wainwright at 43 pitches after two innings. The rest of the story is as predictable as the proverbial sugar cube at a car wash. Wainwright, wily veteran that he is, settled himself down, shut us down, and would have picked up another W, if his bullpen hadn't blown it. Profar and Grish looked bad against Waino. He also got Manny twice, and Manny was tossed following his second K of the night. Manny needs to know better. At that point we are down two and still within striking range. Our bats, surprisingly, made a game of it on Grish's late game heroics, but it was lights out from there on out until the Cards walked it off in the 10th.
Snell, of course, was his predictable self. About 20 pitches per inning, putting the guys behind him to sleep. That's still his main blemish. We needed a quality outing in this game in the worst way. Snell delivered just that, but his timing is always the worst. Even during 1-2-3 innings, he throws too many pitches. If you need five to six pitches per batter to get an out, chances are you won't hang around very long. I have no idea why Snell is unable to hit spots, so that he can induce a grounder or fly ball with one pitch. Is it the chemistry with the catcher? Has he forgotten how to pitch altogether? Lord if I knew. On the face of it, his outing still looked good. Six innings, two runs, that's the stuff we needed. And yet, I never had the feeling that he was ever going to beat Wainwright. I have a feeling that if the Cardinals had never swung the bat off Snell they would have still managed to score a couple of runs. That's Snell in a Padres uniform. Unlucky? Perhaps. Has he been underachieving for us for us? Absolutely. Let's hope he can still build on tonight's performance.
Sadly, the bats haven't picked it up, either. Grisham, although his homer tied it for us, is in the ninth spot with a .163 average. Cano is at .158 and just can't turn on pitches the way he used to. Cron and Voit, our three and four hitters, have a combined average of .210. And I have no damn idea why Hos was on the bench. Who was going to protect Manny now? Cron? And why were we sitting a lefty against Wainwright, a righty? Well, I guess that's why Bob Melvin manages baseball while I only watch and write about it.
Arenado, a reliable Padres killer, was quiet in Game 1, but returned to his pesky self last night. Give him credit. Not many Rockies have made it outside of Denver's thin air, but Arenado has shown that he is a heck of a player wherever he's gone. I don't know about you, Compadres, but I usually think the same whenever I read or hear about a star player of the Rockies leaving Denver. Let's see if he can really hit now. Anybody remember Vinny Castilla? Troy Tulowitzki? They used to be damn good players. Post Coors, they couldn't hit a beach ball.
Back to Machado complaining about balls and strikes. Although I didn't like it, it doesn't surprise me at all. The problem here is where the ump is positioned. Do you think he can follow every ball into the strike zone without the catcher framing the hide out of every ball? No way. Too many blind spots. Look at where the ref stands in cricket: right next to the bowler. It's no wonder that they rarely miss a call. The umps will continue missing pitches until MLB agrees to change (fat chance) and moves the ump from behind home plate. Install robots, if you must, but please do away with the old and tired tradition of Major League umpires calling balls and strikes behind the catcher.
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