San Diego Padres bullpen fuels the fire in loss to Giants

The San Diego Padres fell to the San Francisco Giants on Friday night, with two familiar issues to blame: bullpen pitching and strikeouts.

The San Diego Padres could have taken Game 2 from the San Francisco Giants, but then some of the team’s most familiar problems reared their head again.

San Diego got a solid start out of Dinelson Lamet, who allowed just three runs on three hits Friday at Oracle Park—although two of those three hits were home runs.

Lamet also struck out ten Giants, and left the game after five innings with the Friars down 3-1; he would ultimately be tagged with the loss, however, because the team couldn’t score until the San Diego bullpen had put the game out of reach.

After a scoreless sixth, Robbie Erlin was asked to pitch the seventh and eighth. Erlin surrendered five runs, all of them earned, on eight hits to increase the Giants lead to 8-1.

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Erlin has now given up at least three runs in two of his last three relief appearances. Over Erlin’s last eight innings, he’s allowed eight runs and 14 hits.

But the game could still have been won before Erlin arrived, given that the team was only two runs down in the sixth. The San Diego Padres offense let them down, too.

The team went just 1-for-4 with runners in scoring position Friday, and some of the team’s big bats struck out multiple times en route to their 72nd loss.

Manny Machado had a big night at the plate, hitting 2-for-4 with a double and his 19th home run of the 2019 season. That’s still significantly off his 2018 number of long balls (37), but at least he provided some offensive firepower.

Machado even provided some extra entertainment as he rounded the bases, as you can see in the highlight clip below. However, some of his colleagues weren’t anywhere near as successful.

https://twitter.com/Padres/status/1167643672021594112

Wil Myers went 0-for-2 with two strikeouts and a walk, and the previously hot Eric Hosmer ended up 1-for-4 with another pair of punchouts.

Hosmer also committed another error, his 12th of the season, which added to San Diego’s trend of fielding mistakes. They’ve made at least one error in three of their last five games.

The Padres are now ten games under .500 as they prepare to close out August and the series with San Francisco. The third and final game takes place Saturday, so the best the Padres can do is win then and leave having picked up one game on the third-place Giants.

For complete coverage of the San Diego Padres’ 2019 season, continue following Friars on Base all season long.