Any decent baseball executive will tell you a team needs to be strong up the middle. On Friday night against Colorado, the Padres started a rookie at pitcher, catcher, shorstop and 2nd base.
Looks like the kids can play a little bit.
The rookie infusion led a 7-1 win over the Rockies to give the Friars their first 2-game winning streak since the All-Star break.
Starting pitcher Cal Quantrill turned in the best start of his professional career. The former 1st round pick out of Stanford went 7.0 shutout innings, allowing five hits with five strikeouts and no walks. The guy he was throwing to was pretty good, too.
Francisco Mejia, who has been rightly criticized for his defense at times, caught a nice game and had a pair of hits. In the month of August, Mejia is hitting .571. He's responding nicely to getting regular playing time and it looks like Luis Urias might be doing the same.
The rookie 2nd baseman who struggled mightily for most of his Major League time in 2019 is starting to heat up. Urias had two hits, drove in a run and scored three times. He's hitting .333 in August.
And of course you have that Tatis kid. Fernando Tatis Jr. drove in the first two runs of the game with a line drive double in the 3rd inning and drew a pair of walks to run his season OPS to .998. The double upped his hitting streak to 13 games.
Local
Another rookie had the game's biggest hit. Josh Naylor drilled a pinch-hit, 3-run home run in the 8th inning to make it 7-0 Padres and put the game away. The Padres can win the 4-game series from the last-place Rockies on Saturday evening when another rookie, Chris Paddack, takes the mound against Chi Chi Gonzalez.
