San Diego Padres Historic First: Cracking The Worst Start To The Season Ever
The San Diego Padres offense was on point last night against the Colorado Rockies, but with the runs that San Diego put up on the board in that game, they ended a streak that is a historic first for the MLB. That’s right, the Padres started this season off with more consecutive scoreless innings than any other team in MLB history.
The San Diego Padres opening series was against their division rival Los Angeles Dodgers, and they were shut down each of the 27 times they took the offensive in the games. In total, the score of the series was Dodgers 25, San Diego Padres 0.
The Padre’s historic stint of offensive futility finally ended three innings into last night’s game when John Jay singled, driving in Melvin Upton, Jr. from second base. All told, San Diego’s players were called out 91 consecutive times without being able to squeeze out a run.
Obviously, 30 and a third consecutive scoreless innings is not the way San Diego or any MLB team envisions the start of a season going, but Upton revealed after the historic streak had ended that the scoring drought had become somewhat of a joke among the Padres while it was going on.
“It’s been kind of a running joke in the clubhouse — we’ve got to score eventually,” Upton, Padres utility player, said after last night’s 13-6 San Diego win over the Rockies.
“We were just trying to keep it loose. We kept it loose yesterday on the plane, we kept it loose today before the game. We stopped trying to force the issue today, and we just let it happen.”
It certainly did happen – and fast. Manager Andy Green revealed that once the San Diego Padres had scored their first run off Colorado’s John Lyles in the top of the fourth inning, the team’s offense really broke loose. Less than three innings later, San Diego’s batsmen had crossed the plate 11 times.
“As soon as the first run scored, I think everybody relaxed and you saw a lot of missiles be hit after that,” he told reporters.
He also made clear that the Padres’ lack of offensive support was by no means due to a lack of skill. They just needed a little push first to get rolling.
“These guys can hit; they’ve been good baseball players for a long time. It’s just one of those things that you just can’t explain in baseball where you go 30 innings and don’t score a run, and then you finally do and you’re looking at a dozen runs real fast.”
Matt Kemp, San Diego Padres outfielder, shared a similar sentiment.
“We have a great offense. We just have to have good at-bats and go out there and do our job, get those big hits when we need them, do the little things, move runners over, do all the things that good teams do. I think we’re going to be okay.”
RECAP: The #Padres break out the bats for a dominant first win of 2016! https://t.co/NU7ZxpK9Zt pic.twitter.com/Ti7AAAdprb
— San Diego Padres (@Padres) April 9, 2016
Many of the San Diego Padres would probably chalk the sure-to-become infamous streak to a jinx or curse – it is a well-documented historic fact that MLB players tend to harbor a large amount of superstition, a fact that Green alluded to.
Does San Diego’s stellar offensive showing in last night’s first win of the season mean that the Padres broke out of a slump, though, or just that this year’s Los Angeles Dodgers are going to be extremely good? After all, the Padres weren’t the only team to pull off a remarkable feat with the one-sidedness of the opening series – not since the historic 1963 St. Louis Cardinals has any team shut out their opponents in their first three games of the season (they led off the season with a two-game series against the Mets and faced the Phillies in their third game).
We’ll have to keep eyes on both the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres over the coming weeks to get a better idea of whether the teams’ first series of the season was a fluke or a sign of what’s to come in the 2016 MLB season.
[Photo by David Zalubowski/Ap Images]
