Best Team in Years? Final Week In Review

The Padres ended the season on a strong note. Mandatory Credit: Lance Iversen-USA TODAY Sports

Opening Thoughts

The Padres ended September in predictably neutral fashion to end up with a final record of 77-85. That is the best record since the 2010 team won 90 games, and there is a lot of positives to take from that. What’s more – they went 29-24 AFTER the trade deadline. So after they shipped off their All-Star Closer Huston Street, after they traded away once-future of the franchise player Chase Headley, and after moving fan favorite Chris Denorfia, they played 5 games over .500.  The offense has shown nights where it can score 8 runs a night – and then only score 2 runs for the next three games. While ownership appears to be finally stable now, and a new GM has taken the reigns of the future, there is still a lot of work to do. 

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Luckily, good starting pitching appears to be at a surplus. In the final week of the season Ian Kennedy showed that he can continue to be the veteran man in the rotation for the Padres AND throw over 200 innings on the season. Only 8 other pitchers in MLB pitched 200 innings with 200 strikeouts this season. An impressive accomplishment, and given that many of the Padres pitchers for the future are young and innings will be monitored in 2015 and 2016 makes it that much more important to have a reliable pitcher who can pitch deep into games and make his start every 5th day. He also evened out his record at 13-13 and a 3.63 ERA. The 13 wins ties for the team lead with Tyson Ross, and Kennedy also led all Padres pitchers in home runs hit this year at 1.

The fun of September baseball is seeing the youngsters getting to play. This week the Padres closed out Petco Park against the Rockies with the best record at home ever with 48 wins. They traveled to San Francisco and took only 1 of 4 though from the second National League Wild Card representative Giants. How some of these positives will translate into 2015 success remains to be seen, but read on to dig a little deeper in the Padres final week of the 2014 MLB season.

Rookie Reliever Quackenbush ended up with 6 saves filling in for injured closer Benoit. Mandatory Credit: Jake Roth-USA TODAY Sports

Rockies Series

The Padres started the week with a 1-0 victory over the Rockies, a game that Eric Stults won amid articles written about he is the worst starting pitcher in all of baseball this year. Take that, critics. Stults pitched into the 7th inning Monday night, allowing hits but doing enough dancing to escape any damage on the evening. The Padres bullpen came in after that and did what it has done all year long. Closing in the 9th was rookie Kevin Quackenbush, who picked up his 6th save while filling in for injured Joaquin Benoit and ended up with a K/IP ratio over 1 in nearly 60 innings pitched at the MLB level this season. Given his minor league rate is over 1.3, I expect this to go up next season in most likely a full time setup role. Catcher Rene Rivera provided the lone offense of the evening for the Padres with a double and his 42nd RBI.

On Tuesday the Padres fell short – literally and figuratively – as they lost 3-2 thanks in large part to a home run saving catch made in left field by Rockies outfielder Brandon Barnes. Robbie Erlin only pitched four innings and disappointing needed 84 pitches to get to that point. He only allowed 2 runs and it was an uncharacteristic home run allowed by Dale Thayer in the 8th to Drew Stubbs that proved to be the difference maker in this one.

Wednesday the Padres closed out a successful season at Petco Park with a very special victory. Joe Wieland, who underwent Tommy John Surgery in 2012 pitched up his first major league victory. He battled into the 6th innings and then waited for the bullpen to do their thing and the Padres ended up with a 4-3 victory. He was aided offensively by a 3 run Tommy Medica home run in the bottom half of the first, who didn’t exactly light 2014 on fire but got great experience and it will be interesting to see how he figures into the Padres future in 2015. Also if he will continue to not wear undershirts with the road blue jerseys. The home wins was the most since 1998 for the Padres, and the attendance on the season was the most since 2008.

Though not their original ambition, the Giants will happily take a WC 2 spot into the playoffs. Mandatory Credit: Lance Iversen-USA TODAY Sports

Giants Recap

With the home victory Wednesday, the Padres tied their win total from 2012 and 2013. So heading into beautiful AT&T Park by the Bay, they knew just one victory would give them more wins since 2010 for the franchise. Though I doubt too many of the players care about this, I’m sure Bud Black is keeping a tally mark on the wall. Thursday they found themselves in a slug-fest and wound out falling short 8-9 despite coming back from a 6-0 deficit. It was also tied for the most earned runs given up by Andrew Cashner as a Padre. The Padres hit 4 home runs, including 2 by Yasmani Grandal with one being a Grand Slam. Grandal now leads the team in home runs with 15 despite a batting average fighting to stay above the Mendoza line. It was a tough one to blow, as a rare bullpen implosion cost the Padres a surprising comeback victory.

However, Friday night the Padres would not be so let down. Staff veteran Ian Kennedy talked about in the intro showed his mettle in leading the Padres to a victory, evening his own record in the process and giving the Padres the most wins in several seasons. Kennedy missed just one start on the season and showed his reliability and fight throughout the season playing through injuries. Yasmani Grandal provided another RBI for his season total and Rene Rivera went 2-4 with 2 RBI as well for the Padres. Quackenbush and Benoit closed out the scoreless last two innings to wrap things up.

Unfortunately the rest of the weekend would not turn out so well for the Padres. Eric Stults continued his strong second half on Saturday night, but Dale Thayer blew it for his second loss in a week. They lost 3-1 on Saturday and were pounded 9-3 on Sunday to close out the 2014 season. Not quite the final week they were going for at 3-4, but the 3 wins did guarantee an improvement from 2013’s record so at least a moral victory on some level. More concerning was Robbie Erlin‘s poor finish to 2014, not even lasting two innings in Sunday’s loss.

Liriano, Medica, and other rookies look to impact position players for the Padres in 2015. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Changes for Position Players in 2015?

Many players got to come up and show what they can do at the Major League level for the Padres, including Tommy Medica, Rymer Liriano, Jake Goebbert, Jace Peterson, Cory Spangenberg, And of course players like Yongervis Solarte and Abraham Almonte are young and were acquired in trades. So who stepped up? Unfortunately, no one really did. Sure, Tommy Medica had spurts of getting hot. He almost hit for the cycle, but he ended the year at .234 with 9 home runs, and more alarming struck out 75 times in just 240 AB’s. To compare that, Jedd Gyorko had a forgetful 2014 by only hitting .210. He struck out 100 times but in 400 AB’s.

Rymer Liriano came up to much fanfare, but only hit 1 home run in his 109 AB’s with a low OBP as well. Spanenberg only played the last month of the season and amassed 62 AB in 20 games, but he managed 2 homers and 4 stolen bases for a .290 average and .313 OBP. Of course that sample size is too small to measure much, and having just locked up Jedd Gyorko to a long-term deal it’s not financially feasible to play him over Gyorko at this point. Nonetheless, the Padres brass are hoping that these young players were able to get a taste of the big league life this season and think about it all off-season. Then, when next season rolls around, they feel confident that they have in fact been here before, can brush off the nerves and play the ball that got them to this level. Because another year of Alonso, Gyorko, Grandal, Venable and others hitting .220 or lower and still starting has to end now. The minor leaguers need to step up and force that change. They have the talent, now they need to get it done.