MELVIN RESTING AFTER SURGERY
Padres manager Bob Melvin is resting comfortably and expected to make a full recovery following successful prostate surgery on Wednesday morning at UC San Diego Health.
He had not reached out to Ryan Christenson in the moments following a 7-5 loss to the Cubs, but the Padres’ bench coach figured it wouldn’t be too long before the 60-year-old skipper touched base to talk baseball, to talk lineups and most certainly to talk rotation.
Melvin had hoped to rejoin the Padres in time for the the San Francisco leg of the upcoming road trip.
But there will be plenty to chime in on before then.
“As far as I’ve heard, everything went according to plan,” said Christenson, the Padres’ interim manager. “When he’s able to communicate, he’ll be in communication with me each day. We’ll talk about the lineup, we’ll be talking about strategies that might pop up throughout the game and go over some different scenarios. But I want him to get through these next few days obviously and get comfortable again.
“And when the time is right and he’s ready to communicate with me, I will be doing that on a daily basis.”
Voit connects Luke Voit
jogged a few steps out of the batter’s box in the ninth inning Wednesday and slammed his bat to the ground.
He’d just missed Rowan Wick’s
1-2 knuckle curve.
He knew it because he’d finally remembered what it felt like to square up a baseball. Voit homered in the second and seventh innings — his first, finally, with the Padres — and added a third 104-plus-mph ball in play with a 287-foot fly ball to center with a runner on first base in his final at-bat.
Voit also singled to left in a threehit game.
“It sucks that we lost, obviously, but it’s coming together,” said Voit, who returned from the injured list Tuesday. “I felt good. I just missed the last one, too. I had really good atbats today. Even my two outs were barrels. Just keep that train rolling into Atlanta.”
Voit’s first home run was his hardest, a 105.6 mph, 38-degree arching shot that cleared the wall in left to give the Padres a 2-1 lead in the second inning.
Voit, however, did not watch the entire flight because he’d turned to make eye contact with catching coach Francisco Cervelli as he jogged down the first base line.
“Me and Cervelli have been talking a lot lately,” Voit said. “He pulled me aside this morning. We were talking about some footage from last year. Credit to him for helping me get back into the posture I need to be in to be ready for whatever pitch is coming and to get my A-swing off on those.”
Voit’s second-inning homer snapped an 0-for-19 skid that began before he hit the injured list with a biceps injury. He’d struck out in nine straight place appearances with Triple-A El Paso and was 0-for-18 on his rehab assignment while trying to work out of bad habits that crept into his swing during a frustrating start to his stay in San Diego.
Now, maybe he can relax a bit. “As a power hitter, you just want to get one on the board, I guess,” Voit said. “It’s nice to get that out of the way. You just go back to not having to worry about trying to hit the ball 450 feet. You just go back to taking my hits and putting myself in good counts so I can get pitches that I can do damage on.”
More COVID protocols
A day after Christenson returned to the bench following a COVID-protocol absence, Padres third base coach Matt Williams missed Wednesday’s game due to COVID-19 protocols.
The first occurrences of the season led to a few players and staff members opting to wear masks in the clubhouse this week.
Meantime, multiple positive tests in the Guardians’ visiting clubhouse in Chicago led to the season’s first COVID cancellation on Wednesday.
“It’s out there,” Christenson said. “We all know what’s out there. There’s a bunch of different symptoms going around. I even had a slight cold myself. There’s viruses all around everywhere right now, some COVID, some non-COVID. So we’re just following the protocols and doing what we can do to avoid this thing, but it’s just a reminder that we’re not out of this pandemic.”
Notable
The Padres set their rotation for the Atlanta series: Yu Dar vish, Sean Manaea and Joe Musgrove. LHP Blake Snell’s return has been greenlit after he struck out seven over five innings of one-run ball on Tuesday at Triple-A El Paso in his final rehab start, but how he folds back into the rotation — currently six deep — after Monday’s off-day is a conversation that will be had soon.
“We’re in a good place with a lot of depth,” Christenson said. “We have a lot of tough decisions to make and a lot of options at the same time.”