Five games back with a 40 to go. Or is it 39? Ah, what does it matter? The Padres are seriously f'd. Every player, coach and talk show host is saying there is plenty of baseball left. Forty games is the home stretch, you can't be taking losses so graciously anymore. We don't have a lot of time. No more excuses, no more speeches and no more indifference.
The problem is the Padres are incapable of learning from their mistakes. It's kinda like those movies Memento or 50 First Dates where the main character forgets everything they learned the previous day. Everytime the Padres put a great game together, they seem to forget everything that made them successful in the first place.
It'd be one thing if the Padres were playing good baseball and the D-Backs were playing mediocre baseball, but unfortunately the reverse is true. Coming back from five games behind is still tough but doable since we play the D-Backs in a four game series at home. This team cannot win the NL West if they continue to hit in the .230's and waste scoring opportunities.
Coach Kentera was saying that the Padres need to realize that they are bad at offense and focus on moving runners, but I disagree. Moving runners to strand them on base in scoring position still does nothing. The Padres have to hit, pure and simple and they can't give up outs to move a player to second with no chance of scoring him. We can't waste outs. There really aren't any players that have the bat control to hit a ball where they want to. They can't stay out of double plays, advance runners or hit sac flies. With two strikes it's time for the Padres to change their plan, choke up and put the ball in play, at least then they have a chance.
The number of time the Padres strike out really concerns me. Their inability to put the ball in play gives them no chance to move a runner and sucks the life out of the offense. I wish we had some speed to steal some bases or take the extra base but we only have Mike Cameron and he doesn't get on base enough to make many steals.
I'd hate to see where we'd be without a Brian Giles right now. He is the sole reason that we have had any success in the past couple of weeks. Adrian Gonzalez has become a non-factor in the second half of the season and has all but disappeared. The rest of the guys show up once a week or so. They have the talent but it keeps coming back to consistency.
I'll still be here rooting for them but their chances are slipping away and they better realize that and stop waiting for tomorrow to improve. The D-Backs are showing no signs of slowing down and there is a lot of ground to be made up. It's not time to panic quite yet, but it is time to pull out all the stops and do whatever it takes to win. We need to be aggressive at the plate and on the base paths. These guys know how to play it's just a matter of execution.