Friday’s game was full of incredible moments, but there are two that need special scrutiny.
In the top of the eighth Robert Suarez was brought in to defend a 3-2 lead. He allowed two runners but got two outs before venerated Padre killer, lefty David Peralta, stepped in. Peralta had been stinging the ball all night. With the tying run on second and two straight left handed hitters due up, the traditional move would be to bring in the closer to seek a four out save. The Padres did not. They left Suarez in. Peralta got a game tying double down the left field line. It was all too reminiscent of the defining moment of another crucial game1:
The Dodgers would go on to score five runs in the inning, all with two outs.
The Padres demonstrated that there is a line in the sand when it comes to Josh Hader: he is not being asked to record more than three outs in a game, even this late into the season.
As if to draw attention to this pivotal decision, in the bottom of the eighth the Padres rallied. They scored a run to make it 7-4. With two outs and two on, Fernando Tatis Jr. stepped to the plate. He represented the tying run. Lefty Caleb Ferguson had been on the mound all inning. Without hesitation the Dodgers brought in their closer Evan Phillips, a righty, to face Tatis. They asked Phillips to record the four out save. It worked. Phillips got the Dodgers out of the jam. The Dodgers defended a three run lead, in a game that didn’t matter that much to their postseason ambitions, with much more vigor than the Padres defended a one run lead with far more on the line. This decision making needs to be examined by the Padres brass. The calculus seems flawed.
The Padres paid Suarez a lot to become the team’s 8th inning man. But they should not feel obligated to let him finish the inning when he is struggling, and they have an even better weapon available. The final score of 10-5 does not capture how close this game was. The Padres led with four outs to go. The Dodgers scored an unimaginable 8 runs before the fourth out was recorded. None of those four outs were recorded by the best reliever in baseball, fresh off two days rest, sitting in the bullpen as another one melted away.
Other moments in the game drew some criticism, but the decision to remove Darvish after the seventh was reasonable. The intentional walk to Jason Heyward didn’t lose the game. It came down to an opportunity for the Padres to exercise remaining agency, and place their thumb on the scale of fortune. Putting Hader in wouldn’t have guaranteed the win, but it would have guaranteed they put their best foot forward. They opted not to. This is Padresing.
Lessons Unlearned
After the game a reporter (it sounded like AJ Cassavell) asked Melvin “At this point in the season, you have those two lefties up, is there any consideration of going to Josh (Hader) for four outs? Is that even a possibility knowing how important these games are?”
Melvin answered cryptically: “No, I don’t think we are there yet.”
This is difficult to accept… The Padres, even going back to last season, have shown a propensity towards managing for games/innings that may never materialize. Keeping the powder dry for a future battle, but all too often, it simply goes unspent.
Win Every Pitch
The Padres might take some inspiration from their division, and Wild Card, rivals the Giants. The Giants have been one of the most consistently overachieving franchises for the past decade plus. They took what appeared to be a ho-hum roster to a franchise record 107 wins in 2021. Many have guessed at what the secret to the Giant’s success was. We can’t know for sure but it’s possible it has to do with their philosophy of winning. The Giant’s philosophy was explained as ‘Win Every Pitch’. They seek to maximize their win probability with each pitch of the game. They don’t pass up any chance to tilt the odds in their favor, even when up big in a blowout, or clinging to a tight lead. That’s the opposite of Padresing. For much of the season the Padres have acted as if they could throw away a win here and there and still survive, rest players in crucial games, give away at bats they felt they owed to certain players. They wanted to have their cake and eat it too. That strategy was exposed. They’ve taken steps to move away from it. But there remains a crucial line in the sand they appear unwilling to cross. It’s time to switch modes. They need to try to win every pitch. They need to cross the line in the sand.
The picture in the background is Bryce Harper hitting the go ahead 2-run homerun off of Suarez in game 5 of the 2022 NLCS. The discussion after that game what about why Josh Hader was not asked to pitch to the best hitter in the biggest moment of that game.
From the second that I saw we brought in Suarez, I felt like we had a strong chance of losing the game. It was the exact feeling I had in that Giants game earlier this season when we brought in Luis Garcia, who had just come back from the IL and clearly wasn't pitching up to the level they'd been expecting from him (and, to this point, still hasn't).
Suarez hadn't given up much in terms of runs to that point, or even hits; but, more telling to me is that he also hasn't gotten a lot of strikeouts. I know I don't need to tell this to you, but Robert Suarez isn't a pitch-to-contact guy, and his SO/9 before last night was at 3.0. Small sample size, sure, but I felt like, every time I've seen him, it feels like he hasn't been quite "right" yet, or hasn't made it back to himself (compare 3.0 SO/9 to his 11.5 last season).
Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about - I'm not a manager, after all - but bringing in a power pitcher who isn't doing the thing he's there to do yet against an elite offense like the Dodgers seems like an obviously bad call. Feels like more of the same thing we've been seeing.