GRISHAM LIKELY BACK FOR RANGERS
Tommy Pham’s final game in center field was likely Tuesday night.
He was on the bench at the start of Wednesday’s finale of a seven-game homestand. That was hours after Trent Grisham showed up at Petco Park and took batting practice and before Grisham boarded the Padres’ postgame charter flight to Texas for the start of a sevengame road trip.
The expectation is Grisham, sidelined since March 11 with a hamstring strain, will be activated from the injured list before Friday’s series opener against the Rangers.
“I feel pretty strongly he should be ready to go for the Texas series,” manager Jayce Tingler said.
Pham, who grounded out as a pinch-hitter Wednesday after starting the season’s first six games in center field, will move back to left field.
Snelly defense
Blake Snell threw too many pitches again. Not all of them were his fault.
The left-hander gave up his first two runs as a Padre. Difficult to blame that entirely on him, either.
Between the ball that bounced off Jorge Mateo’s glove and over the fence for a two-run homer in the second inning and errors by Manny
Machado and Ha-seong Kim, Snell was compelled to throw 20 extra pitches Wednesday.
He left the Padres’ 3-2 loss to the San Francisco Giants after five innings having thrown 87 pitches in all.
“Especially the way Snell was going, if we can keep that ball in play and get an out, we have a really good chance that Snell cruises and maybe goes a little bit longer,” Tingler said of the Mateo play.
Snell, who had the same thing happen to him in a game in Baltimore last year,
was more upset at himself for the fastball he left belt high on the inner third of the plate to Darin Ruf.
“I need to be better,” he said. “Once I do that, I don’t get upset with what the ball does after that. Once it leaves my hand, I have to make sure it’s the pitch I want, it’s the pitch I executed and I was pretty frustrated with that one. Seeing it go over the fence, I (couldn’t) care less. I just didn’t approve of throwing the pitch I threw. I was pretty frustrated with myself with that.”
He did acknowledge he wasn’t helped by his defense, but he essentially shrugged.
“It’s frustrating, and it will always be frustrating,” he said. “… They are going to make mistakes every now and then, but they are going to help me, too. It’s going to happen and I’m aware of it, and it’s next pitch. What can I do? You get upset, you’re just going to dig yourself a deeper hole. That’s not a good thing. It’s all right, I got you. I can go another batter, another couple. Whatever. I just don’t get too upset. I think there’s no reason to get upset unless you want to give up runs.”
Snell, who yielded a double to Evan Longoria two batters before Ruf ’s homer, did not allow another hit but did walk four.
“I felt all right,” he said. “I have to do a better job of not as many walks, free passes.”
Snell said he should have shaken more calls from catcher Luis Campusano and lamented both his own execution and some calls by home plate umpire Mar vin Hudson.
“Pitch selection to start and then the execution a little bit,” he said. “I felt like I was throwing good pitches, getting called balls. That was pretty upsetting. All in all it’s always on me. I have to find ways to be better, be more in the zone, make them swing.
Just a lot that I have to look at and see what I can do to be better.”
Catching up?
Kim’s 389-foot fly ball to center field in the second inning came on a 94.9 mph fastball, the hardest pitch on which Kim had put a ball in play this season. In his next at-bat, he topped it, grounding out on a 97 mph fastball. In the seventh, he sent a long fly ball to left on a 95.5 mph fastball.
They weren’t hits, but they showed improvement by the rookie. Kim rarely saw pitches faster than 92 or 93 mph while starring in the Korean Baseball Organization, and his tardiness on the velocity typical in the major leagues was a glaring deficiency in spring training.
“Over the last couple days now he’s starting get in the flow a little bit,” Tingler said. “The at-bats are starting to get better. He’s more on time. He’s getting to velocity a little better. That’s what we want to see, especially if he’s going to have a little bit of a stretch run of getting everyday atbats. Offensively, we want to just see him progress.”
Kim started just one of the season’s first five games but took over at shortstop the past two-plus games with out with a shoulder injury.