The Padres finally found some thunder at the plate, but one blowout doesn’t erase the mess they made of the first leg of this road trip.
San Diego hammered out 19 hits in a 19-2 win over the Royals, with Jackson Merrill and Fernando Tatis Jr. driving in four runs apiece as the lineup kept turning over and putting pressure on Kansas City. It was the kind of all-hands offensive burst the Padres have been chasing for weeks.
Still, the bigger picture hasn’t changed much. The Padres opened their 10-game trip by dropping two of three to a club sitting deep in the AL Central basement, and manager Craig Stammen made it clear before Sunday’s series finale that the work is far from finished.
“We’ve got eight more,” said manager Craig Stammen said prior to Sunday’s series finale against the Royals in a piece written by Robert Falkoff of MLB.com. “We have the ability to turn it around.
We’ve seen it from many other teams in the league already. Believe it’s going to happen and put the work in to get it done.”
San Diego’s offense did exactly what Stammen wanted in the rout, especially when it came to runners in scoring position.
“When we had runners in scoring position, we took some really good at-bats,” Stammen said. “That’s what we’re hoping for the rest of the year.”
The game wasn’t a clean cruise, either. German Marquez had a rough start, and with the Padres leading 7-2 in the fourth inning, Stammen turned to Yuki Matsui with the bases loaded and nobody out. Matsui kept the Royals from cutting into the lead, and that sequence ended up being the hinge point of the afternoon.
“That was the biggest part of the game,” Stammen said. “We got off to a good lead, 7-2, but even then the game was in the balance with the bases loaded and nobody out.
Matsui did a really nice job of getting the first hitter and not worrying about the runners on base. Just an amazing job by him, coming in and being the hero.”
Ty France added a pair of homers in the late surge, and he said the win mattered because of where it came in the trip.
“It’s an important road trip, and we let the first one get away from us,” France said. “So, it’s big that we came out today and did what we did.”
The Padres have been stuck in a rough stretch for a while, which made Sunday’s outburst feel a little different. It may not fix everything, but it gave them something they’ve been missing.
“It doesn’t feel good for the Royals and we know how that feels,” Stammen said. “But it’s good to be on the other end and create some positivity. It’s that ‘baseball is fun again’ feeling that we can take into a very important series in Atlanta.”
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