In an extremely rocky start for Despaigne the Friars try to pull together and split the series, falling short at the last second.
For the fourth day in St. Louis and after a lot of hard-played ball, today's game was ramped up by weekend theatrics that almost promised us a long-fought battle. Although it wasn't very long before Despaigne exited the game; for him it must have felt like extra innings. Giving up 6 hits, 5 earned runs and a walk, the struggling righty gave the Padres a big defecit to make up.
With news of the bouncing-back first baseman Yonder Alonso being withdrawn for the season due to his forearm injury, the weight was once again pushed to the young Padres team to make up for the early season woes that have plagued us. Despite the pitching struggles today, there were some top performances on the San Diego side.
ICYMI: Forearm injury to end #Padres 1B Yonder Alonso's season. http://t.co/IWBPGJ2u8j
— U-T Padres (@UTPadres) August 17, 2014The first and second innings is where things got ugly for San Diego. Giving up five singles, a walk, and a home run in the second, the Cardinals were up very early by a whole lot. Their 5-0 lead held all the way to the 5th, when the Padres started striking back with 2 runs in the 5th and 6th innings. This time in the form of an Alexi Amarista and Yangervis Solarte rally RBI-single. Oh, not to mention yet another Jake Goebbert triple.
Jake Goebbert isn't very original. He seems to only be only hitting triples lately. And that's okay with me.
At this point it's fair to mention once again that the Padres' run differential since June 17th has dropped from an ugly -66 to a thin -10, which has a lot to do with the hot young bats and rekindled old. By the time things got to the 9th inning, we closed a five to nothing gap and were sitting on a score of 7-4. With back-to-back walks from Will Venable and the Ninja, and a following walk drawn by Solarte, a bases-loaded RBI-single from Abraham Almonte pulled us insanely close at 7-6.
Clutch situation + newly brought-up player + hitting with RISP = second-half Padres baseball.
Now with the game within our grasp, and a Seth Smith groundout putting runners on 2nd and 3rd, the evil Seth (Seth Maness) was able to get Yasmani Grandal to pop out and break Padres fans' hearts in the 9th inning once again.
It's a tough pill to swallow after just starting to settle into a hot little winning streak. A blown opportunity on Thursday due to some umpire malfunctions, a deflating loss on Friday, a redeeming win on Saturday, and now a near-victory so close we could taste it - Padres baseball has been giving faith in short bursts. Shaky faith, but faith nonetheless.
Speaking of shaky, our WPA was shaky as hell. Although never honestly close to our favor, our two hard rallies kept things interesting.
Source: FanGraphs
It was a very, very quiet morning in the GLB.
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| Total comments | 41 |
| Total commenters | 9 |
| Commenter list | Brother Bob, Hormel, Ron Mexico, Sam (sdsuaztec4), abara, athletics68, flood, hashtagtroll, podpeople |
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abara summed it up pretty well with what earned him his 1 rec.