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2022 Season | Series #8 | Padres @ Guardians | May 3-4, 2022 | 6:10 p.m.

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Wham with the Right Hand

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The Guardians return home after a disappointing 3-7 road trip that was salvaged from complete disaster by a 3-game sweep of the A’s. They start with a two-game series against the 15-8 Padres, who are in 2nd place in the N.L. West, baseball’s strongest division with four teams at 13-9 or better.

The Padres may not be as awesome as their record suggests. Their schedule has been very easy so far. They are 13-3 against team with losing records, including 6-0 against the unbelievably bad (3-19) Cincinnati Reds. The only winning teams the Padres have played are the Giants and Dodgers. They are 1-2 against both of them. So 16 of their 22 games have been against teams under .500.

So based on very limited data the Padres do not appear to be an elite team but they have no trouble with the bad and below average teams (Cincy, Pittsburgh, Arizona, and Atlanta). I’d say they are definitely better than average but not as good as their 15-8 record indicates.

The opener will be an interesting matchup of Mike Clevinger against his old rules-busting buddy Zach Plesac. Zach got off to a great start with a 1.53 ERA after three starts before getting blasted by the Angels in his last start.

Clevinger has not pitched in over a year and a half. He managed to pitch 20 innings for the Padres in 2020 before going down with an arm injury that required his second Tommy John surgery. I assume they won’t let him go more than 60 pitches or so.

The Padres rank 5th in MLB in runs per game at 4.74, so Plesac will be challenged. They are 7th in batting average and on-base percentage and 16th in home runs per game, so they manufacture runs as opposed to waiting for the home run. Plesac has never faced any of the players currently on the Padres roster.

The Padres are 13th in team ERA but in a two-game series the G’s aren’t going to see their entire staff.

To add more interest, Clevinger will be facing some of the guys who he was traded for, specifically, Josh Naylor, Austin Hedges, and Owen Miller. And Wednesday night Cal Quantrill starts for the G’s against his old team. So there will be five players who were involved in that trade playing in this series. If Gabriel Arias were still here it would be six.

I was just thinking how badly things have gone for starters traded by the Indians. Clevinger pitched 20 innings and had to have major arm surgery. Kluber pitched one inning and was done for the year. Trevor Bauer just got suspended for two years, costing him $60 million. Carlos Carrasco started only 12 games for the Mets last year with a 6.04 ERA. He’s doing better this season with a 4.09 ERA in four starts.

The Padres’ offense is being carried by two players. Eric Hosmer, the former Royal, is hitting .389, which is over 100 points above his career average. His OPS is 1.026. He’s 11-for-25 against LHP’s so it’s not like you can bring in a lefty to get him out in a tight spot. He’s also hitting .390 on the road.

Manny Machado is hitting .375/1.031. Only one other Padres regular has an OPS over .736. I expect Plesac to pitch around those two unless the bases are empty.

As a team the Padres are hitting only .234/.702 so I’m not sure why they are 5th in scoring. Checking FanGraphs, the Padres rank 2nd in the majors in clutch hitting with a score of 1.80, where 2.00 is considered elite. They’ve scored more runs than their statistics indicate because of being able to get hits when they need them.

They're at 15-8 due to a weak schedule, really hot starts by Hosmer and Machado, and outstanding clutch hitting.

In Wednesday’s game Quantrill goes against a 23-year-old lefty, Mackenzie Gore. He’s a rookie who in three starts has an ERA of 1.76. However, two of those starts were against the Reds, who are last in MLB in scoring.
 
Say what you want about Mike as a person, but as a MLB SP he's pretty damn good when he's healthy. Hopefully we can get to him, but I'm not expecting a bunch of runs honestly.
 
Plesac needs a bounce back game tonight. The Padres have a lot of holes in their lineup. Their catcher is hitting .219, their second baseman .214, their shortstop .182, and their outfielders are at .182, .176, and .218. They have a very unbalanced lineup.

Plesac needs to dominate the weak hitters and either pitch around Hosmer and Machado or at least keep them in the park. They are not hitting a lot of home runs; combined they have 7 in 23 games. But they're hitting .375 and .382 with slugging percentages just under .600.

In the last seven days Machado is hitting .462. If I were Plesac I would walk him if there were runners on base, unless the bases were loaded. Even then I'd consider it if we had a lead. But Machado has just one home run in 64 at-bats against RHP's, so the plan might be to keep the ball down and hope he hits it at somebody.

Hosmer is hitting .448 with runners on base and Machado is at .385. If first base is open these guys should be walked.
 
Must win series.

Two teams that beat up bad teams and get throttled by good teams.
 
I think that if the Padres could trade Clevinger today for Quantrill, Naylor, Hedges, Owen Miller, and Arias they wouldn't have to think twice.
 
I don't get why they gave up so much to begin with personally...
I mean there were a lot of people at the time, that said the trade was a huge win for the Padres because the Indians were not getting any of the top rated Padre prospects.
 
We playing tonight? What's the weather looking like?
 
I don't get why they gave up so much to begin with personally...
Well at the time Mike was a solid #2 starter, though making that trade in the covid year is the questionable part to me.
 
I mean there were a lot of people at the time, that said the trade was a huge win for the Padres because the Indians were not getting any of the top rated Padre prospects.
From 2017 thru 2020 Clev had the seventh best ERA in all of baseball at 2.96 with peripherals to support it.

The names above him?

De Grom
Kershaw
Ryu
Scherzer
Verlander
Kluber

A little more perspective...

Those four years covered about the same amount of IP that Biebs had going into this season. Biebs ERA in that span was 3.29.

Clev also was under control for 2.5 yrs.

Clevinger was worth probably only slightly less than Biebs will be at the deadline.
 

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