An Article Of Faith
Still alive, for now
The 2023 Padres are not easy to categorize.. They are unique. They are not bad. They’re very good at certain things. No one would say they’re the best in their industry. But they keep hanging around. Maybe they’re the Fallout Boy of major league baseball?
The Padres could have – probably should have been something more. They just beat the Giants in two out of three games, but the way that they lost that one game typified the decision-making that made this team vulnerable to tragically-apt Fallout Boy comparisons.
On Monday night, the Padres led the Giants 1-0 in the bottom of the eighth. There were two outs, and the bases were loaded. This is one of the most high-leverage situations a team could face: Getting any run across ties the game, a hit probably gets you the lead and the Padres only come to bat one more time. Which is to say: That at-bat was probably the ballgame.
The Padres had Robert Suarez on the mound. The Giants pinch hit for righty Heliot Ramos with lefty: Michael Conforto. And of course they did: Conforto’s lifetime OPS against righties is .858.
This may have seemed like an odd move for one simple reason: The Padres have Josh Hader, who is extremely good and extremely left-handed (and yes, Suarez had faced three batters and could have come out of the game1). But the Giants must have noticed that the Padres tend to only use Hader in narrow circumstances: No more than two nights in a row, and never for more than three outs. Hader hadn’t pitched the night before, and Conforto hits lefties much worse than righties, posting a lifetime OPS of just .684 against them. Nonetheless: The Padres needed four more outs, not three, so Suarez stayed in the game.
And the Padres subsequently lost the game. And, amazingly, the decision to not use Hader wasn’t the only thing about that at-bat that reminded fans of some of the flaws that are holding the Padres back.
One reason why the Padres struggle to convert hits into runs is because in high-leverage situations, they swing for the fences instead of shortening up and getting base hits. We’ve discussed this before – it’s a problem. Dennis Lin highlighted this in a recent article, and it appears that players on the team are aware of the problem as well. From the article:
Situational baseball is not their strength.
“That’s what (good offense) is — go up there and try to put the ball in play, try to bring that guy in instead of hit 500-foot homers,” Soto said. “That’s what’s been lacking a little bit, just knowing the moment and the situation.”
“We’ve talked about it, addressed it. Everyone’s aware of it. We’re trying,” another player said. “For me it’s almost like, these guys don’t really know how to do it.”
Which is why it was tough to watch Michael Conforto beat the Padres by doing the thing the Padres so often fail to do.
Michael Conforto is a power hitter. His 162 game average includes 27 home runs and a healthy .459 SLG%, which goes up to .489 against righties. And yet he drove in two runs by taking a contact-oriented approach and slapping the ball the other way. Watch:
Conforto was batting in a situation in which a single is worth much more than usual, and he seems to have known that. He certainly would have loved a grand slam – who wouldn’t? – but he prioritized contact, got the big hit, and his team won. The location of the pitch is also notable: It was in the upper/outer part of the plate, an area that Conforto almost never hits hard:
7% of Conforto’s swings at balls in that location have yielded hard hits (95 MPH+) this season, and it’s been a ‘cold’ zone throughout his career. He usually doesn’t hit the ball hard when a pitcher dots the location like that. But he’s usually trying to drive the ball out of the park. This time he just executed a beautiful piece of situational hitting.
Strategy plays a smaller role in baseball than it does in some other sports. But that doesn’t mean it’s not important; marginal advantages and disadvantages make a difference. Leaving a small amount of win probability on the table (Padresing) – as the Padres did when they kept Hader out of the game – is one reason why the ’23 Padres became the ho-hum team that history may soon forget.
A recent episode of The Padres Hot Tub asked: What is a “closer” if not the team’s highest-leverage reliever? The logic is – or at least should be – that your closer is your toughest pitcher, who pitches in your biggest spots. But those spots don’t always come in the ninth inning – leverage tables prove this. But the Padres seem married to rigid thinking like “Hader never records four outs” instead of asking questions like:
Should a “closer” simply pitch whichever spots are highest leverage, no matter when they occur?
If Hader can only record three outs, would it be okay to use him for the last out of the eight and the first two outs of the ninth?
What strategy would produce the most wins over the course of a 162-game season?
To a large extent, the Padres seem married to convention. One reason why they might not deploy Hader in any high-leverage situation is because those situations don’t optimize the “saves” stat, which affects how players are perceived and paid. The conventional way of using a closer – bringing him in in the ninth inning – developed when teams’ understanding of leverage was “later in the game = higher leverage”. We know better now. The information has changed, but far too often, conventions remain the same. Another issues in Hader’s particular case is that it’s very likely his own preferences being respected by the team by only deploying him in a specific, narrow set of circumstances. But with that in mind, it feels like other teams have picked up on that, it feels like the Giants pinch hit Conforto with impunity, knowing with near certainty that Hader wouldn’t be called in to put out the fire…
Not the worst of all time
The Padres won the second game of the series 4-0. But in the third and final game, the 2023 Padres found themselves in extra innings for the thirteenth time this season. As readers are probably all-too-aware: The Padres lost their first 12 extra inning games this season, which tied the ’69 Montreal Expos for the worst extra innings record in MLB history. That is…how to put it nicely?...sub-optimal. And on Wednesday they had a chance to break the all-time record for extra-innings futility.
BUT THE PADRES WON THE GAME! They improved to a glorious 1-12 in extra innings games, emphatically not the worst mark of all time! And that’s something to celebrate!
The Padres broke the seemingly impenetrable one-extra-inning-win barrier by scoring three runs via productive outs, a throwing error, and a bloop single. In other words: They were not the ’23 Padres, in the best possible way. Incredibly, as of this writing, the Padres are not eliminated from playoff contention. The Grim Reaper is in the room, just sort of futzing with his phone and waiting for one more thing to happen so that he can carry us away. But we’re not dead yet.
What Is Lost
Though the Padres aren’t officially dead, they’ve lost all agency. They need the Cubs and Marlins to lose out, and the Reds can’t win more than once. And the Padres need to win out. In other words: The best possible outcome for the Padres in the final three games probably won’t be enough. Their fate is not their own. Only through a late season cataclysm can they still make it through to the postseason.
And late Thursday night it looked like it was all going to be over. The Mets had held a 1-0 lead against the Marlins into the ninth, but the Marlins scored two runs to go up 2-1. And then the Heavens opened up. Diluvian rains overwhelmed Citi Field. The game was finally suspended after 3 hours of delay. The Marlins were about to end the Padres seasons when fate intervened… We just can’t know if the rains mean clemency or a prolonging of the Padres death knell…
Baseball is a strange game; luck plays a bigger role than in other sports. The best bulwark against bad luck is maximizing every possible advantage. The Padres haven’t done this, and now they’re at the mercy of the baseball gods, not to mention the Cubs, Marlins, and Reds. It is possible that a miracle will happen. But believing that it will happen remains an article of faith.
He’d been brought in in the seventh for the final out and hence could have come out of the game any time.