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For whatever reason the Padres, a team that has spent the entire season in the National League Wild Card hunt, has had all kinds of trouble with the Marlins, the team with the worst record in the National League.
San Diego dropped two of three against Miami at Petco Park and suffered the same fate in South Florida after a 4-3, walkoff loss on Thursday morning.
Dinelson Lamet made his third start since returning from Tommy John surgery and was not sharp. Lamet gave up three runs on six hits and threw 85 pitches in just 4.0 innings. He did strike out five but is still working on harnessing his impressive stuff.
As usual a group of Padres rookies played well. Fernando Tatis Jr.’s slumps are probably not going to last very long. A day after striking out four times and making an error to end Chris Paddack’s run at a perfect game, Tatis snapped an 0-for-11 skid with a solo home run to dead centerfield, his 15th of the year, to cut Miami’s lead to 3-2.
Rookie catcher Francisco Mejia had a pinch-hit RBI single to tie the game 3-3 in the 5th inning. His knock brought in Manuel Margot, who went 3-for-3 with a single, a double and a triple. After that it was a battle of the bullpens and the Padres have a special arm talent that is making a case to be a future closer.
Andres Munoz, the 20-year-old rookie flamethrower from Mexico, threw two shutout innings with three strikeouts. He threw one pitch clocked at 102.1 MPH, the fastest pitch Statcast has ever recorded by a San Diego Padres pitcher. Munoz might have earned himself a shot at working later in games because other than Kirby Yates nobody seems to be able to handle that with consistency.
Trey Wingenter was given the 9th inning. He coughed up a single to Yadiel Rivera and a walkoff double to Brian Anderson to drop the Friars to 46-50 and back into a tie for last place with the Rockies in the National League West.
The Padres start a 3-game series in Chicago against the NL Central-leading Cubs on Friday afternoon with Eric Lauer on the mound against Jon Lester.
