Red Sox 5, Padres 1: Schimpf’s solo shot comes up short

There’s less than four weeks of baseball left for the Padres, so if you were expecting anything other than what you saw tonight, you’ve been deluding yourself. Paul Clemens is what you get when your best pitchers have either been on the disabled list all year or sold off at the deadline. He’s exactly the kind of pitcher you expect to give up three runs on back to back homers in nine pitches. The offense was almost completely ineffective, going 9-for-36 with 9 strikeouts and no walks. There’s not even fun September callups to watch, with El Paso heading to the PCL playoffs and Austin Hedges getting a little too much service time last year.

If you want a bright side to tonight, it’s that Ryan Schimpf is still delivering, hitting his seventeenth bomb of the season off Clay Buchholz in the fourth inning. And Jon Jay is back, for what that’s worth. But really at this point, you should just watch the team go 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position and hum the mantra of every team that doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of making the post season: DRAFT PICK DRAFT PICK DRAFT PICK. It will help you make it to October.

The race to the bottom continues in tomorrow’s rubber match, with first pitch at 6:10 PM.