An Ugly August for Padre Hitters

The month of August was quite UGLY for the Padres and especially the Padre hitters.  Two wins over the weekend to bring the monthly win/loss record to 10-15. While bad, it could have been worse.

There were some fun moments this August. Patrick Kivlehan‘s hot first few days. Travis Jankowski .313 average and 10 steals, including stealing home. However, the team’s hitting as a whole was downright awful. Try last in the National League with a .224 average and next to last in runs scored with 104. The Washington Nationals lead the league with almost 50% more at 152.

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So who were the culprits? There were 11 Padre players who had a minimum of 25 at bats.  Four of those hitters were below .200: Brett Wallace (.120), Derrick Norris (.143), Jabari Blash (.185) and Christian Bethancourt (.194). Furthermore the next three, who all had at least 83 AB’s, were in the .220 range: Yangervis Solarte (.222), Wil Myers (.225) and Alex Dickerson (.229).  Just plain terrible!  I once said Solarte is known to go into dead streaks, but Myers bad month is a little more worrisome.

This reminds me of June 2014 when the Padres set a futility record of batting .171 and scored a crazy low of 60 runs. Carlos Quentin led the bad hitters with .058 in 59 AB’s. That team went 10-17. Those Pitchers saved the day with a 3.38 ERA.

At the beginning of this month I wrote an article “Meet the New Padre Starting Staff” essentially making fun of them. Who could have predicted the Padre pitching would rank 5th out 15 National League teams with a combined 4.28 ERA. They too, like the Padre Pitchers of that June, saved some face.

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Leading the way were starters Jarret Cosart at 2.88 ERA and Luis Perdomo at 3.24 ERA. Both were over 5 starts. How about the two relievers Brandon Morrow and Kevin Quackenbush? No earned runs over 6 and 5 games respectively.

Like I said at the top, the 10-15 record could have been worse had some of our pitchers not stepped up. Maybe only the hitters got the message that AJ wanted a better draft position next year.