San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
FRIARS PLAN TO USE WHOLE ROSTER
The Padres plan to lean on their depth to keep players fresh and healthy and to attempt to maximize matchup advantages.
“We’ve got 160 more games,” manager Jayce Tingler said Saturday afternoon. “We’re going to play our guys. We’re going to use our 26 guys on the roster and I think you’re going to look up after our first seven games and some of the guys are going to play six of them, some are going to play five, some are going to play seven and then we go into an offday and then we have 17 in a row. We’re going to use our depth. We’re going to get our guys in there and get them moving.”
They emphatically showed that Saturday by giving first baseman Eric Hosmer a day off — three games into the season, after he had gone 6-for-7 with two home runs and driven in half of their 12 runs in the first two games. His 12 total bases were the most ever by a Padres player through the first two games of a season.
Jake Cronenworth moved from second to first. Ha-seong Kim made his first start at second base. And Jorge Mateo, who doubled twice in three at-bats Friday, started for the first time in left field.
Cronenworth was the only left-handed hitter in Saturday’s starting lineup, which Tingler said was an afterthought. Diamondbacks starter Caleb Smith is not particularly better against left-handed hitters than he is against right-handed hitters.
“Our goal is to be the best team at the end,” Tingler said. “That means using our depth. That means keeping our guys sharp, fresh, as crisp as we can. The one thing I feel confident, going from 60 games, back to 162, I feel confident that we’re not going to have a position player play 162. We’re going to get some guys off their feet. … That’s not to say that somebody (doesn’t) come off the bench and maybe the most important at-bat could be the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth inning and being able to unload a weapon in a situation there as well.”
This is what the Padres think they have built, the type of roster that provides replenishment in game and from game to game.
That doesn’t mean it’s easy. This new kind of Padres roster was designed so the manager would have to make difficult calls. An abundance of good players is not a problem.
“Oh, yeah, it’s incredibly tough,” Tingler said of sitting Hosmer. “Basically we had it (decided) before the game yesterday. … You want to stay disciplined. You’re trying to think big picture. We have 160 to go. Hos has been awesome. He’s moving great. He’s running. He’s been as tremendous as anyone, and so I think the main point too is while he’s locked in we want to keep that as fresh and crisp as possible and we don’t want to take any of that gas tank down.”
Crone Zone redux
This was a replay for Cronenworth.
When Hosmer was sidelined with a stomach ailment early last season, Cronenworth went from the bench to first base — and the rookie hit .360 with two doubles, two triples and two home runs in his first eight starts.
“I was thrown in the fire, in a place I didn’t expect to be in and didn’t really have any time to think about what was going on,” Cronenworth, who moved to second when Hosmer got healthy, said Saturday. “I think it was actually a blessing in disguise. It was super exciting to just get into a game, then establish myself and start playing every day.”
Cronenworth ended up starting 49 games, hitting .285 with an .831 OPS and finishing third in National League Rookie of the Year voting.
Quickly catching on
Joe Musgrove usually has to break in a catcher when working with him the first few times. He throws six different pitches at least six percent of the time.
“That’s always a tough adjustment,” Musgrove said Friday, “especially coming to a new team, trying to build that relationship with your catcher and have him understand what you’d like to do with certain pitches and certain hitters in certain scenarios. Vic has a good idea of how to overlay pitches and how to keep hitters off-balance.”
That would be Victor Caratini, who caught Musgrove’s first Padres start Saturday. For Caratini, Musgrove’s varied repertoire likely will be less of a challenge than he is used to, considering he is Yu Darvish’s personal catcher.
“Working with a guy like Darvish and being his catcher, Darvish has 11 pitches,” Musgrove said. “It’s not easy to call a game and sequence all those pitches well.”
Caratini caught Musgrove in just one spring training game — Musgrove’s final start, in which he threw five hitless innings.
“It was a pretty sharp outing,” Musgrove said. “…Vic’s been around for a little while now. His presence, it feels like he’s very in control of the games. As a pitcher that gives you so much confidence. He knows what he’s trying to do.”
Injury updates
It appears center fielder Trent Grisham and catcher Austin Nola are on track to return Friday, the first day of the Padres’ series in Texas. They are eligible to come off the injured list Thursday, when the team is off.
Grisham, who strained his left hamstring March 11, played in his first “game” Friday at the team’s alternate site in Arizona. He batted in each of his five innings.
“Was flying around the field, had some action defensively,” Tingler said of the report he got. “Before the game had a pretty good workload of doing ground balls, line drives, fly balls, (batting practice), bunting. … He had a very positive day.”
Nola, who fractured the middle finger of his left (catching) hand on March 12, remains in San Diego. Tingler said he is “doing everything and the swelling of the finger continues to improve. He’s doing more of a workload hitting and receiving and he’s running. … That’s certainly going the right way.”
Starting pitcher Dinelson Lamet, working slowly in his return from an elbow issue that kept him from pitching in the postseason, is scheduled to pitch this weekend in Arizona with a goal of throwing at least three innings and an eye on a return later this month.