Padres 4, Rockies 18: Colorado commits baseball crime in pummeling of Clayton Richard

There was a murder at Coors field today. Clayton Richard was the victim, Kevin Quackenbush: an innocent bystander. Blowout is one way to put it. “Criminal” is another way. Clayton Richard didn’t deserve this. Or maybe he did. Either way, the Padres lost bad and fans probably tuned out by the 4th inning.

The good

If you’re scrolling through the game summary, you might notice a small blip of life in the 6th inning. That was where Jabari Blash scored the Padres’ first run of the game after the Pads were already trailing 13-0. Then, Cory Spangenberg even hit a home run. A three run blast, his 7th homer of the season.

This inning might have been enough to win some games. Not this one.

The bad

Oh, Kevin. Quackenbush was expected to help get this game wrapped up as quickly as possible, coming in from a 10-0 deficit. The first thing he ends up doing is giving a 2-run HR to Charlie Blackmon. Quackenbush would go on to give up 4 more runs, and three home runs in total. It turned a bad game into a truly ugly game but wasn’t the ugliest performance of the day.

The ugly

Clayton Richard. What a San Diego story. 2017 Clayton has been a bit of a weird piece to the Padres rotation. Today, his weirdness took a monstrous form. In just 3 and some innings, he managed to give up 14 hits, 10 earned runs, and 2 home runs. Every inning pitched resulted in at least one run allowed. 3-1-2-6.

At 100 pitches, his groundout rate was still as high as ever. But this disastrous outing put up more earned runs than his last two starts combined then doubled. A career-worst game and a poor sign for the future of the old Friar.