Randy Vasquez usage leaves Padres facing bigger question after Dodgers disaster

There is no good way to dress up a 15-3 loss, especially when it’s to the Dodgers. Whether it's managing the bullpen or the defensive miscues, it’ll all come back to something a little more obvious. In this case, the Padres opted to protect Randy Vasquez, then asked him to survive the moment they were initially protecting him from.

Craig Stammen was pretty honest about it after the game, which is at least better than pretending we saw something different. He acknowledged the gamble, explained the logic, and admitted he probably needed to do a better job putting Vasquez in a cleaner spot.

The Padres used Kyle Hart as the opener for the second game of their three-game-set against LA. They didn’t want Vasquez immediately staring down the top of the Dodgers’ order. 

Vasquez entered in the third inning and the plan looked fine, for a little while. He gave the Padres the bridge they wanted. He settled the game down. But the whole plan ran out of runway when the sixth inning came around. 

Padres asked Randy Vasquez to do too much in the wrong spot against the Dodgers

His explanation actually made plenty of sense from a manager trying to get through a game without torching the bullpen. He said the Padres were trying to sneak Vasquez through another inning. They had Yuki Matsui ready for Kyle Tucker, and they wanted more length from the bulk arm. Long story short, they were just trying to save the bullpen.

The Padres wanted Vasquez shielded from the worst part of the Dodgers’ lineup early, but then they also wanted him to give them length later. Those two ideas were always going to crash into each other if the game stayed close long enough.

Freeman doubled. A defensive mistake helped open the door. The Dodgers started stringing together damage. Then came the homers. By the time the Padres finally pulled the plug, the inning had already swallowed the game whole. The Dodgers finished the top of the sixth putting up nine runs.

It’s not all on Vasquez. The defense did him no favors, and at the same time, the staff was asking too much of him at that moment. 

To Stammen’s credit, he didn’t hide from the moment. His postgame comments were about as direct as a manager can be. He said the Padres needed to do a better job setting Vasquez up for success. He acknowledged that a sixth-inning tie-game spot is usually when the bullpen comes into play. And he admitted that asking Vasquez to pitch in that part of the game was a tough ask. That’s great. Probably what fans needed to hear. Now the Padres have to do something with that information.

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