The season hangs in the balance for the San Diego Padres. With general manager and president of baseball operations A.J. Preller saying publicly, he wanted to wait to see how the team performed after the All-Star break before making a decision on how they would proceed at the trade deadline the Padres have started the second half with back-to-back losses to the Kansas City Royals. San Diego showed fight and intensity in their 7-6 10-inning loss on Friday night and the argument could be made that loss falls more on the shoulders of rookie manager Craig Stammen than the players, but that was not the case on Saturday.
The Padres faced off against a bulk innings reliever for the Royals in Randy Dobnak, but he looked like a dominant starter against the San Diego lineup. The lone run allowed by Dobnak, and the only run of the game for the Padres, came when Fernando Tatis Jr. connected on a solo home run in the top of the third inning which cut the Kansas City lead to 2-1.
San Diego was held in check throughout the remainder of the game, but there were opportunities. The Padres went 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position, but even the one hit did not produce a run. Jake Cronenworth, Ty France and Freddy Fermin all had doubles in the game, but the top of the lineup failed to bring them in. Tatis finished 1-for-2 with a home run, a run scored and an RBI with two walks. The next four hitters in the San Diego lineup combined to go 0-for-14 with two walks and five strikeouts. France and Cronenworth were the only Padres players with multiple hits in the game.
Griffin Canning started the game for San Diego and lasted just 3.2 innings. He allowed four runs on five hits with two walks and four strikeouts. Matt Waldron followed with 2.1 innings pitched with two runs allowed on two hits. Both runs scored on a home run to center field by Kansas City catcher Salvador Perez.
The Padres have opened the second half with a losing series, but they could salvage a win today, but they will need a better start from German Marquez than what they got from Canning and they will need their offense to perform in a manner that reflects their payroll.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.gaslampball.com ’
