Padres Still Searching for First Win of Spring

Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports

Certainly Spring Training results cannot be measured with too much weight. Even more so after just five games.  Yet one thing that could be said is that the point of spring training is to get the cobwebs out, show what the youth can do, and find out which veterans still have some good at-bats and pitching left in them.  The Padres spring is not off to a good start.

Starting out with losses of 7-1, 12-1 and 7-4, 15-4, and a tie respectively cannot be seen as ideal.

While the good news is that Cameron Maybin did homer in Saturday’s game, and Andrew Cashner (2IP, 1H, 0R, 2k) and Ian Kennedy(same line) pitched well in their spots, not really sure how to take a positive out of the 12-1 drubbing they took and also only managed a meager 5 hits. Also, Maybin left Sunday’s game with an apparent shoulder injury after making a great catch.

Sure, you can say that the Padres had their reserves in, as 5 runs were allowed by the likes of Leonel Campos in Saturday’s drubbing, but the Padres hitters were also facing the likes of Carson Smith and Dominic Leone, so in theory it should cancel out. Perhaps the Mariners acquisitions in the bigs gave a confidence boost that has trickled down, or perhaps it was just a bad day at the office, but not a great start to things.

The silver lining in Sunday’s tie with the Dodgers in the split-squad was overshadowed by the potential loss of Maybin for significant time, while the other half of the team lost 15-4 with only 4 hits and 3 errors!  What is going on?  It’s time for the Padres to start getting a few more positives, rather than negatives.  Won-Loss record surely isn’t huge at this point of the spring, but a few better offensive performances would certainly be nice to see.  Last spring Jedd Gyorko won the 2nd base job in the spring, while the Padres so far are still waiting for their breakout player of 2014.

Still a lot of time left in spring training, but the Padres certainly hope to start showing a little more than just a couple of good outings followed by disastrous innings and an offense that hasn’t shown up yet.