Former Aztecs head basketball coach Steve Fisher used to say "Don't make me coach effort." Fish would not have been happy with the Padres on Friday night.
The Friars looked, at best, uninterested and, at worst, like they had completely checked out and refused to make anything resembling an effort in a 9-0 loss to the Diamondbacks at Petco Park.
At least, most of them did. Starting pitcher Eric Lauer bounced back from a terrible start in Colorado to throw 6.0 innings of 2-run ball with nine strikeouts. Relievers David Bednar and Eric Yardley both worked a scoreless inning in relief.
Basically everyone else in a Padres uniform was rubbish.
On offense the Friars had a bunch of awful at-bats against a 30-year-old rookie named Merrill Kelly, who spent the last four years in the Korean Baseball League. Kelly tossed 7.0 shutout innings and only allowed a pair of singles while striking out nine Padres hitters. The Friars whiffed 12 times in the game.
On defense Eric Hosmer had the laces on one glove rip, got another glove and couldn't catch the ball, making another error to give the former Gold Glover 14 on the season. Even all-world 3rd baseman Manny Machado made a mental error in what turned out to be a disastrous 8th inning.
Arizona led 2-0 when Trey Wingenter gave up an RBI single to Morse High School alum Adam Jones to make it 3-0. Wingenter hit Nick Ahmed with a pitch then got Carson Kelly to hit a grounder to Machado. Jones ran around him well outside the base line ... but Machado never made an attempt to tag him. Since no attempt was made Jones was called out for running outside the baseline trying to avoid a tag and the bases were loaded.
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That's when it all went to bleep.
Wingenter walked Abraham Almonte to make it 4-0. In came Nick Margevicious, who promptly coughed up a bases-clearing double to Josh Rojas. Arizona scored seven times in the 8th inning alone. The Padres have scored five runs TOTAL in their last five games.
On Saturday Cal Quantrill takes the mound against Luke Weaver. You know, if you still care more than the Padres seemed to on Friday.
