Padres Struggling Early And Often

(AP/Matt Slocum)

Padres’ Offense (or lack thereof) is the story of this young season

Yes, it has been only 10 games. And yes, Yan Solarte is on the shelf. However, the Padres have lost 7 games so far. To make matters worse, San Diego has scored zero runs in exactly half of those games.

Earlier Thursday afternoon, the Padres set a record that nobody ever wants to set. The Padres made MLB history by becoming the first team ever to be shutout in 5 of their first 10 games. Seriously.

First-year manager Andy Green never envisioned this is how his managerial tenure would start. Of course, nobody pictures this happening.

Is it time to hit the panic button? Or is this just a bad start for the Padres? It’s hard to tell.

After starting the season with a 27-inning, three-game shutout at Petco Park against the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Padres beat the Rockies in Denver, where they scored 29 runs in the first two games before losing on Sunday in Colorado.

Then another four-game series, this time in Philadelphia. San Diego won the first game, 4-3, and lost the next three with a combined 1 run over the next three games. That makes five runs in four games against the Phillies, a team who is currently in a heavier rebuild than the Padres.

Next up for the Padres? A plane ride back to San Diego, where they will have a big homestand. The Padres will face the Arizona Diamondbacks in a three-game series starting Friday, and the timing couldn’t be worse.

The starters for the series for Arizona are Zack Greinke, Shelby Miller, and Patrick Corbin. Greinke and Miller have been roughed up early this season, but this might be the perfect time for their first quality start of the year.

After that, they play the Pirates and then the Cardinals, two playoffs teams from the NL Central, in a pair of three-game sets before heading to San Francisco to face Bruce Bochy and the Giants.

There are no breaks for the Padres, especially not in the National League West.

Andy Green always seems cool, calm, and collected no matter what. Maybe it is time for the rookie manager to be a bit worried about the lack of offense.

The Padres have a faced great pitching, with Kershaw, Kazmir and Maeda in the first three games of the season. This Phillies series was full of good pitching by both teams, and Vincent Velasquez threw a 16-strikeout, no walk complete game shutout on Thursday, becoming the first pitcher to throw such a game since Max Scherzer.

Still, make no excuses. The Padres have the pop and the talent, but the most consistent hitter has been newbie Jon Jay, who came over in the offseason as part of the Winter Meetings trade that sent Jedd Gyorko to St. Louis.

Matt Kemp had a huge series in Colorado, but besides that hadn’t done too much. For that matter, nobody has done much else. Brett Wallace has the only Padres’ RBI in the last three games, and that’s never a good sign.

The player with the highest batting average for the Padres is, yes, you guessed it, Melvin Upton, who is hitting at a .267 clip to start the year.
It certainly doesn’t help that Derek Norris is at .133, Cory Spangenberg is hitting .184 and Alexei Ramirez is batting just .176.

The Padres struck out 47 times in four games against the Phillies.  47 times,  in just four games, against a team that has acknowledged publicly that they are rebuilding. That’s is almost 12 punchouts per game.

The numbers aren’t good, and the offense isn’t good. Green has the utmost patience,  and you have to give credit to Andy Green for not going nuts just 10 games into the season.

On a positive note Robbie Erlin, Colin Rea, and Drew Pomeranz all pitched extremely well in these past three games in the city of Brotherly Love, but none of them could come away with a W. The reason why? 1 run in the last 27 innings of baseball.

There is 152 games left in the season. 152 chances to find the offense. 152 opportunities to prove everybody wrong.

Which Padres team will we get? The Padres team that a lot of people picked to finish at the bottom of the National League? Or perhaps a Padres team with some swagger and tenacity and the ability to score runs, regardless of who is on the mound.

It is no secret that AJ Preller can and has changed the team at the drop off a hat, with the single call on his cell phone. The talent is there, the pitching is there, the bats are there.

The bottom line is this: Don’t stress out. Not just yet.