James Shields can't catch a break

There are a few ways to enable a loss in baseball world. Giving up a lot of runs is always gives you a good chance, but scoring no runs is a sure-fire guarantee.  After fighting an uphill battle against the Giants Monday, the Padres were handed another loss in the form of 1-0.

Even then, that's not to say the game was all bad. In Padres fashion, our consolation today was a stellar pitching effort by James Shields, which is something that isn't to be taken for granted. Shields gave up zero home runs, albeit he was pitching in a cold AT&T park, but his biggest slip-up of the entire night was giving a 2-out double to Dernard Span to bring a lone run home.

James finished the night going 7 full innings, only giving up three hits, and allowing that single earned run despite only striking out two.

Compare that to the Padres' 7 hits, and you start to huff and scratch your head. But not for long, once you notice that the team left 5 on base, only had a single hit in 7 situations with RISP, and struck out 11 times. We made Johnny Cueto look awfully good, and for the second straight night let a completely winnable game slip right through our fingers.

Some more consolation is Alexei Ramirez went 2-for-3, and is starting to drive that average up. A bummer stat to counter that nightly performance is that we can't seem to steal bases successfully anymore. Last night, a strike-out-throw-out to end a rallying inning put a bit of a spotlight on the fact that we're tied with 4 other teams in the 'caught stealing' category.

The Padres need to figure out hitting with RISP, and need to figure out more successful base-running, or will suffer the fate of more 1-0 losses to come. But hey, at least the Mike Janela bullpen curse has been broken.