The Padres have a day off on Monday before starting a series in Philadelphia on Tuesday. Perhaps, on their cross-country flight, they can figure out what's wrong with their offense.
The Padres are last in the league in hits, runs, batting average, slugging percentage, on-base percentage, and hope. It's been so bad so often, we're kind of running out of questions to ask about it.
"Then don't ask them," said manager Bud Black after Sunday's particularly frustrating 6-0 loss to the Nationals at Petco Park.
Well, then, let's try a different tack. Baseball has 3 phases, right? How are the two that don't involve swinging bats doing?
"We're holding our own defensively, and we're pitching, on balance, OK," said Padres manager Bud Black. "Obviously, when you're not scoring runs consistently it makes it tough to really get anything going."
See, it all comes back to offense. The Padres have yet to sweep a series in 2014. Their longest winning streak is four games.
The Padres are the only team in baseball that has not yet scored 200 total runs. Whatever they're doing is simply not working. But, they're not ready to make wholesale changes yet.
"You've gotta battle," said 1st baseman Yonder Alonso. "You have to grind at-bats. In general, as a hitter, you have to continue to compete and do the things you want to do."
What's not readily apparent is what, exactly, it is they want to do at the plate. Sometimes they get aggressive and swing early in counts, sometimes they try to work deep and get a good pitch to hit. Whichever one they choose seems to be the wrong one for that day. Still, the manager holds out hope.
"It will come," said Black. "There will be a time when we start swinging the bats, the runs will come, the pitching will start clicking and you'll see those consecutive wins, two, three, four, five, six, seven in a row."
They'd better. The Padres are on a pace to score exactly 500 runs. No Major League team has failed to reach 500 in a full (non-strike shortened) season since the 1971 Padres.
