CRONENWORTH BACK TO EARLY FORM
Jake Cronenworth was the leading candidate for NL Rookie of the Year at the end of August.
September was not nearly as kind to him.
October baseball has been.
The 26-year-old second baseman became the first Padres rookie to homer in a postseason game, an eighthinning solo shot that allowed Trevor Rosenthal some breathing room as he locked down an immaculate bullpen game.
It was Cronenworth’s first home run since Aug. 30.
He was hitting .356/.411/ .624 with four homers and 17 RBIs when he was named the NL Rookie of the Month for July/August.
Cronenworth hit .183/ .275/.268 over the final month of the season, but remained locked into manager Jayce Tingler’s lineup at second base and rewarded the Padres with a productive Wild Card Series.
Cronenworth went 5for-8 against the Cardinals, collected hits in each game and went 3-for-4 with two runs scored and a home run in the finale.
He also helped out the bullpen day on defense, ranging to his left for a diving stop on a ground ball off the bat of Matt Carpenter to help the 21-year-old Adrian Morejon out of a scoreless fourth inning.
“I never considered it (taking him out),” Tingler said. “I feel that our group of coaches and staff, I know we can evaluate talent, ability, things on the field. What I think we’re really good at. We know our people. We know our guys. Because of how Croney and these guys are, seeing him work through, we were extremely confident he was going to deliver.
“From his diving play to the awesome at-bats, he was Jake Cronenworth 2020 this series.”
Don’t give a flip
Months later, the Texas Rangers were still so upset with Jose Bautista’s bat f lip in the 2015 AL Division Series that Rougned Odor delivered a right cross to the Blue Jays’ slugger’s jaw the
following year.
Mitch Moreland, the Rangers’ first baseman during that brawl, was among those still seething. Times change. Perspectives shift. Maybe especially when it’s your guys f lipping bats at the plate as the Padres — Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado and Wil Myers — did throughout Thursday night’s power surge.
“That was a long time ago,” Moreland said with a laugh Friday afternoon.
He added: “It’s just a different game. It’s a new time. I don’t know if you’ll ever see me f lip one like that. It’s just different. It’s a different type of entertainment. It seems like it’s happening more and more all around the league. “It’s the new baseball.” Moreland joined the Padres’ party at the trade deadline. His new manager, Tingler, was the Rangers’ major league field coordinator when Bautista celebrated a three-run homer that gave the Blue Jays a
lead in a decisive Game 5 in 2015 by standing at home plate and tossing his bat away in triumph.
Tingler has been on board from the get-go even as Thursday’s bat-f lips again stirred the debate.
“It’s weird that it’s still a conversation, honestly,” Tingler said Friday afternoon. “Nobody is showing anybody up. It’s energy. It’s raw. It’s real. They’re playing the game. They’re firing up their teammates. I don’t want to say we’re changing anything. I think things like that have been around. I think that the only thing we concentrate on is we play the game right. We play it with energy. We have a ton of fun. We play it with a ton of passion. There are all plus-plus qualities in the game and so we value those things. That’s great. We want people to be themselves. …
“People are going to have critics. That’s fine. We’re pretty comfortable with who we are.”
Will the Cardinals be
seething over the Padres’ histrionics a year from now? Doesn’t seem likely. In fact, Matt Carpenter said he’d get a phone call from his dad “that I don’t want to answer” if he tried out a Tatis bat toss, but policing the Padres’ celebrations is well beyond the Cardinals’ purview.
“If there was a poster child for what the game is trending toward, you saw it yesterday with Tatis,” Carpenter said. “Look, that’s not necessarily how I am with it personally, but I have no issue with it in the game.
“... I’d rather we not give up home runs to him so he doesn’t have the opportunity to do that, but I think the celebrations in the game of baseball, it’s just part of it now.”
Phamtastic
Tommy Pham had collected four hits in his first four at-bats Thursday when he stepped out of the batter’s box shaking his hand after losing his bat on a swing. He
was immediately visited by Tingler and a trainer, who learned the left hand that sustained the broken hamate bone had gone numb.
It happens. He can’t suffer further injury so his plan all along has been to alternate playing in pain and dealing with the numbness.
“We talked about taking him out,” Tingler said. “He looked at me like I had 10 heads.”
Pham grounded out in that final at-bat Thursday. He was 0-for-4 with a strikeout Friday and replaced by Jurickson Profar in left field for the final two innings.
Notable
Tingler did not provide much of an update on RHPs Mike Clevinger and Dinelson Lamet before Friday’s game: “They both had positive days. It really is pointless to predict or get into it. I would love to be talking about that situation tomorrow.”