Sunglasses, by design, are usually best utilized when they are covering the human eyes. Sunglasses can cut down on the glare of the sun … and not to sound too much like the late, great Yogi Berra here … but only if you put them on your eyes.
That is a lesson that the Padres might want to remember during day games moving forward because it hurt them in a 4-1 loss to the Cardinals in St. Louis on Sunday.
In the 4th inning at Busch Stadium the Padres had a 1-0 lead (thanks to an Eric Hosmer RBI single the previous inning). Starting pitcher Matt Strahm walked Matt Carpenter and then got the always dangerous Paul Goldschmidt to hit a harmless fly ball to left field.
Hunter Renfroe lost sight of it, had the thing glance off his glove as he fell over, and watched as the ball bounced out of play for a 2-base error.
“Just one of those balls that got away,” said Padres manager Andy Green after the game. “Tough sky. Tough sun. He makes that play over and over again and we would have loved to see him make that play there.”
That tough sky and tough sun might have been better navigated had Renfroe been wearing sunglasses. Here’s the problem:
Renfroe was wearing sunglasses. He was just wearing them on top of his hat instead of on his face.
It’s one of those funny baseball things that plenty of outfielders do but this time it hurt because Paul DeJong followed up with a 2-run double, a ball that probably would not have scored any runs if Carpenter was still on first base. The error ended up giving Strahm the loss.
Of course it didn’t help that the Friars offense was once again non-existent against Adam Wainwright. The veteran righty struck out nine Padres and only allowed the one run. Still, the Padres won the series and if a baseball team wins more series than it loses it’ll finish the season with a winning record.
The Padres head to San Francisco to start a 3-game series on Monday in a rematch of Opening Day. Eric Lauer gets the start against Madison Bumgarner.
