There are bad baseball games. There are outright embarrassments.
Then there’s what the Padres did on Saturday night in Arizona.
The Friars lost 20-5 in a performance that would not have been acceptable from a Junior Varsity team.
The only guy who looked like he was really trying for the Padres was outfielder Wil Myers. He had his first career 3-home run game and drove in four runs. But he will be in the history books for another reason:
In the modern era of Major League Baseball (since 1900) no player had ever hit three homers in a game his team lost by double-figures.
Tyson Ross has been the subject of trade rumors in recent weeks. His outing in Phoenix may have dropped the asking price a bit. Ross got shelled, giving up eight earned runs in 2.0 innings. He was followed by four Padres relievers and all of them gave up runs.
It got so bad that Kirby Yates, who is the odds-on favorite to be the Padres representative at the All-Star Game, allowed three runs and got just one out. His season earned run average doubled in one outing (granted it went from 0.79 to 1.57 but still that’s fairly staggering).
Only slightly less worse than the Padres pitching was the Padres defense. 2nd baseman Jose Pirela made three atrocious plays in the field (only one of which was ruled an error) and right fielder Hunter Renfroe terribly misplayed a ball that landed in front of him, then shot right by him.
Now that the Diamondbacks have reached the 20 run mark the Tampa Bay Rays are the only team in MLB that does not have a 20-run game.
Amazingly the Padres can split the series on Sunday afternoon at Chase Field when Clayton Richard takes the mound against Zack Greinke.
