San Diego Padres: Week #4 Recap

Recapping all of the action from the final week of April for the San Diego Padres including the week’s most thrilling and frustrating moments.

The dog days of April have set in for Andy Green’s Padres. The long stretch of games played, little home cooking and youthful inexperience has taken a toll on this scrappy team. The schedule for the beginning of the 2017 season has not been kind to the Friars but this week is when the wear and tear has shown most.

Despite Wil Myers continuing his torrid month and Ryan Schimpf coming out of his prolonged dry spell, little else went right offensively for most of the week. And the pitching has been even worse. Losing 3 of 4 to the Diamondbacks, and not looking like major leaguers part of that time, the Padres battled back versus the struggling Giants to take 2 of 3 with come from behind wins in the last two games.

Wil Myers hit back to back 3 run homers to take the final two games of the series against the Giants and save the week from being a complete disaster. Going 3-5 from last weekend to this, the Padres saw the return of Cory Spangenberg early in the week. His promotion from AAA El Paso put an official end to the experiment that was Christian Bethancourt.

Although he cleared waivers over last weekend, Bethancourt wasn’t sent to AAA until Tuesday and was given time to decide if he wanted to remain with the organization and continue his efforts to convert to pitching. Spangenberg gives the Padres flexibility in the infield and in left field as well as giving Schimpf a break that seems to have regenerated his bat.

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Jabari Blash made his reappearance this past week after Travis Jankowski suffered a bone bruise from a fouled ball off his foot and had to be placed on the DL. Other than one homer he has continued to struggle at the plate.

Poor starting pitching and even worse bullpen work stressed the 12 arms on the pitching staff. This brought about the claiming of RHP Kirby Yates off waivers from the Angels and Kevin Quackenbush again being sent down to El Paso. If the pitching continues to struggle there most likely will be many occurrences of inserting fresh arms into the mix to save the strained staff.

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The win against the Giants on Saturday represented the best offensive performance of the season by the Friars. Besides Myers homer, Allen Cordoba hit his second major league home run and it was for 3 runs as well. His ability to play multiple positions and the development of his bat  during the first month of the season has been a treat to watch. It continues to amaze me that this young man was playing rookie ball last season.

The beginning of May brings a well deserved and needed day off before starting back against Colorado at home. The streakiness of this team in not surprising and the won/ loss record is not what we as fans should be watching. There are glimpses of the performances we might see on a more consistent basis in the future and no one can ask anymore of Myers at this point.

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I remain hopeful that there will be improvement in the consistency of this group as the season progresses and that might be better baseball before the end of the year. Let’s just hope there is a pitching staff that can give them a chance to win a few games.