Padres hung rookie Jase Bowen out to dry in viral moment vs Phillies

There is a difference between giving a rookie a real opportunity and then just tossing him into traffic. In some ways, the Padres did both with Jase Bowen on June 2. His major league debut should be remembered as a cool moment. A 25-year-old outfielder finally getting the call after tearing up Triple-A El Paso. His family and friends getting to watch him live out his dreams. He even logged his first big league hit.

Instead, most people are going to remember how the game ended. TalkinBaseball posted the clip of Bowen’s final at-bat against Phillies closer Jhoan Duran, and boy, it was bad. There’s no sugarcoating it. Three pitches. Three sweepers. Three swings at pitches that were not particularly close to the plate. Okay look, Duran is nasty. The camera angle doesn’t help either. But he threw that same nasty pitch over and over, and Bowen chased it over and over until the Phillies had a 3-2 win and social media had its new favorite thing.

But the Padres won’t look at this as a rookie failing a test. Honestly, they kind of designed it.

Padres put Jase Bowen in an unfair spot against Jhoan Duran

Bowen was batting in the bottom of the ninth, with San Diego trailing by one, against one of the nastiest late-inning arms in baseball. Duran welcomed him to the big leagues with a saw blade.

We get why Craig Stammen stuck with him. Ty France and Rodolfo Duran had already been burned. The bench wasn’t left overflowing with perfect answers. The cleanest alternatives were Nick Castellanos, cold off the bench in an electric environment in Philly where he spent four years, or Bryce Johnson, who hasn’t exactly forced his way into the lineup with the bat.

Johnson entered the night slashing .188/.257/.507 with zero home runs and two RBI. It’s not like  Stammen would’ve been praised if he leaned on him to save the day. So, in the moment, leaving Bowen in was understandable. He had already collected his first major league hit earlier in the game. He had earned the chance to keep playing. It’s a perfectly rational baseball argument for letting the kid take that at-bat.

There’s also a perfectly rational baseball argument that says the Padres should have saved him from it.

If Stammen had gone to Johnson and Johnson made the final out, Padres fans probably would have wondered why Bowen didn’t get to take his shot. That’s how this works. The manager is usually wrong in hindsight because hindsight has better lighting.

But once Duran made Bowen look completely overmatched, the story changed. Now Bowen is not just the rookie who struck out. He’s the rookie who went viral. Now he’s a guy people are joking about on social media because one at-bat against a monster reliever made him look like he had no chance.

Bowen had done enough in Triple-A to force the Padres to pay attention. He came in with real production and power. So the organization had a reason to believe he could help.

One bad at-bat against Duran will not erase any of that. But the internet is built for clips. Bowen’s swings were too big. His recognition wasn’t good.  And he never adjusted after seeing the first sweeper dive away. By the third one, Duran didn’t overthink it. He just threw it again. Bowen’s bat path and adrenaline did the rest.

Bowen deserves some blame for chasing. And big-league pitchers are paid to expose holes. But the Padres deserve blame for putting him in a spot where the downside was so obvious. 

Hopefully, Bowen keeps his head up. He should. This cannot become the thing that defines him, no matter how many times the clip gets shared. Players have survived uglier moments than this and gone on to have great careers. A three-pitch strikeout against Duran says more about how cruel the league can be than it does about Bowen’s future.

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Follow