A bummer of a season that we don't want to end (but totally do). A game that went nine innings too long. A final dagger, piercing the heart through a damp, bloodied, brown robe.
Well, here it is. The final episode in the 2014 season of San Diego Padres baseball. It kind of feels like a beloved TV show gone wrong: A lot of our favorite characters are no longer on the show, even more didn't develop into the types of characters that we wanted to watch. A few stood out and charmed us, but collectively this is the type of show you would not renew for a second season.
Unfortunately, today's game can't really be alluded or compared to the rest of the season in any playful ways. Unless you point out that it was another game that the Padres were stonewalled at three runs. But today featured Robbie Erlin and his (not-very-Padres) pitching being absolutely clobbered, followed by Tim Stauffer being beat-up, then Alex Torres and Nick Vincent being held down and socked until their arms went numb.
Erlin barely lasted one inning, giving up 4 earned runs in 4 hits (one of them a home run). He walked two Gnats, and was succeeded by Stauffer (who lasted 2 innings before giving up a solo HR). Torres and Vincent arrived just in time (to concede 2 more runs each). Although the Giants and newbie Chris Heston didn't initially fare too well either, giving up 3 earned runs off 6 hits, and walking two as well, once the rotation of Tim Lincecum, George Kontos, Erik Cordier, and lil' Bochy combined with each other the Padres stayed dead-quiet.
Our only runs came off of Cory Spangenberg (RBI single), Yasmani Grandal (RBI single), and Seth Smith (sacrifice fly). Towered by the Frisco offense, Spangy ignored the performance of his team and had himself a heck of a day, getting two hits and showing off his defensive versatility. Cory posted a .290 batting average for his MLB career debut month, which is something to skeptically be excited about, maybe.
Please stay good next year, please stay good next year, please stay good next year.
Before the score had even reached 9-3, most San Diegans had completely tuned into the simultaneously running Chargers vs. Jaguars game, which featured a team who was in more of a "winning" appearance. But the best way to describe a very sad, bitter-bitter game to end the season was put simply:
The wheels are off and on fire. #Padres
— Gaslamp Ball (@gaslampball) September 28, 2014Today was hard to face for a few reasons. Losing isn't fun. No more Padres baseball isn't fun. And the deprivation of lovable stuff like: Little Ninja's tiny feet feet pitter-pattering over to a diving play, Cashner's flowing golden mullet, Smith and Medica's heart-melting smiles, Maybin's little windmill arm-pump thing he does, the Enberg on-air flubs, the dancing Mudcat, Sweeny's dimples, etc. in the off-season. It was an ugly disgusting beautiful hilarious depressing horrible season.
But it's over.
The game could have been in our favor if the pitching tightened up a little more today, but it didn't. The season could have been in our favor if the hitting sharpened up a little, but it didn't. Our win expectancy for today paralleled a lot of our season losses: a quick spike in the beginning followed by a slow death-by-crushing finish.
Source: FanGraphs
Eleven of you beautiful GLB'rs showed up today for our final game thread of the season. I had the pleasure of meeting a few of you the past couple of weeks. You guys made this season my most enjoyed year of baseball since the late 90's when I was a kid falling in love with the sport. Thank you all for that.
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| Total comments | 129 |
| Total commenters | 11 |
| Commenter list | B Cres, CurbEnthusiasm, Darklighter, EnglishChris, EvilSammy, Friar Fever, TheThinGwynn, abara, daveysapien, jbox, jodes0405 |
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For our final day Darklighter was a chatterbox and kept the conversations going. TheThinGwynn was clutch with his tendancy to collect recs with a total of 6.