PUNCHLESS IN SEATTLE
Padres waste fine start by Darvish; bats can’t get anything going against Mariners rookie
If news about Major League Baseball was slow to travel to the South and Emerson Hancock had not heard how disappointing the Padres lineup has been this season, he would know after Wednesday night there isn’t much to fear from the players wearing uniforms with the big names on the back.
There was that Ha-Seong Kim guy who created some havoc. But not much else.
The Padres lost 6-1 to the
Mariners on Wednesday in large part because they couldn’t score more than one run in five innings against a pitcher making his major league debut and then did close to nothing against a string of relievers.
“Any loss is disappointing right now,” Padres manager Bob Melvin said. “With Yu on the mound and you’re facing a guy in his major league debut, maybe that adds to it. But I think any loss right now, especially after we lost the first game here, each one of them (is) disappointing.”
It was Cal Raleigh’s tworun homer, a 450-foot blast to right field off Steven Wilson, in the eighth inning that provided the difference for the Mariners before they added three more runs against Wilson and Tom Cosgrove.
But the Padres’ offense continued to be meager and scored just one run while losing two games here.
Jake Cronenworth’s oneout walk and Luis Campusano’s two-out single in the ninth gave the Padres their only baserunners in the final three innings, as they lost their fourth consecutive game and fell to 4½ games back in the race for the National League’s final wildcard spot.
Being that it is 2023, it is almost certain Hancock was very much aware of the Padres’ plight, even though he grew up and went to college and played minor league baseball almost exclusively in Georgia and Arkansas.
And he pitched against them just as successfully as many other major league pitchers this season.
The Padres could not manage much against Hancock, a 24-year-old who was called up Wednesday from Double-A and allowed just one run in five innings. The Mariners’ top-rated pitching prospect surrendered two singles and walked three, and the Padres went 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position while he was in the game.
They would finish 0-for-9. The Mariners scored just
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one unearned run off Padres starter Yu Darvish through the first six innings, and reliever Robert Suarez bailed him out after the first two batters reached base in the seventh.
Kim made the Padres’ lone run of the series happen in the first inning by walking at the start and then tying
his career high for stolen bases in a game in a span of three pitches.
Kim, who has reached base in 18 consecutive games, stole second on the second pitch of Fernando Tatis Jr.’s three-pitch strikeout and then stole third on Hancock’s first pitch to Juan Soto. Kim ran home on Soto’s soft grounder back to Hancock, which the rookie elected to throw to first rather than try to get Kim on
what would have been a close play.
It was Tatis making the correct and bold decision on a throw in the bottom of the first that prevented a run.
After Eugenio Suárez’s two-out single past a diving Manny Machado, Raleigh grounded a ball down the right field line and rounded first to try for a double. Tatis ran in, picked up the ball after it caromed off the side wall and threw to second
base in time for Xander Bogaerts to tag out Raleigh well before Suárez reached home.
Kim also got the first hit off Hancock, with one out in the third inning, and stole second base during Tatis’ 10pitch at-bat. But he was stranded there when Tatis and Soto grounded out.
The Mariners took advantage of a poor throw and an off-line throw by Tatis to tie the game in the bottom of
the third inning.
Cade Marlowe led off with a line drive to right field and rounded the bag aggressively, drawing an aggressive throw from Tatis, which ricocheted off Marlowe’s foot and bounced into foul territory. Marlowe moved to second on the error, to third on Josh Rojas’ groundout to the right side and scored on J.P. Crawford’s fly ball to Tatis, whose throw home was up the first base line.