The San Diego Padres return home after a rough ending to their 10-game road trip. San Diego lost the last four games and five of its last seven. Two players are smarting after an on-field collision in the last loss, and the team finds itself out of first place for the first time in two weeks. They’ll host the NL East leading New York Mets in a weekend series that starts Thursday.
New York Mets vs San Diego Padres
Thursday, 3 June 2021, 10:10 PM EDT at Petco Park
The 10-game road trip could have ended better for the San Diego Padres. Six games in, the Padres had won four on the trip and sat atop the National League West by a game and a half margin. Four games and 24 runs allowed later, the Padres return home after posting a losing record on the trip, riding a four-game skid and looking up at the Giants in the NL West.
They’ll face the New York Mets in a four-game weekend series that starts in San Diego on Thursday. The Mets have seven fewer wins than the Padres and a 33-point lower winning percentage, but New York leads the lowly National League East by four and a half games, the widest margin of any division in baseball.
Mets on a Roll
The Mets enter the San Diego series having won six of their last seven games, beating up on the lesser teams in the NL West—Colorado and Arizona. The Mets have scored 31 runs in their last four games and started the latest hot streak by allowing two or fewer runs in five straight. The Mets have done this while missing four bats in the lineup and two starting pitches due to injuries.
The total number of Mets on the injured list, once at 17, is now down to 13, but New York got some more bad news on the injury front on Wednesday when Jonathan Villar, who had started 27 games in a row, left the game with hamstring tightness.
The Mets will start the series in San Diego with Taijuan Walker, who has been a pleasant surprise after joining the team in the offseason. Walker is 4-1, 1.84 and will be making his second start since returning from, yes, the injured list, last week. He struck out eight in five scoreless against the Braves the last time out.
Bad, Meet Worse
The Padres were swept in three straight games by the Cubs, knocking them from the top spot in the West. Making matters worse, the Padres may have lost two position players in the game.
Outfielder Tommy Pham and shortstop Ha-Seong Kim collided while trying to field a pop fly in Wednesday’s game. Pham needed stitches to close a cut, while Kim is in the team’s concussion protocol. Despite the injuries, the two players had a confrontation in the dugout after leaving the field, which manager Jayce Tingler wrote off to “competitiveness and passion.”
On the bright side, Fernando Tatis Jr., who left Tuesday’s game early and was held out of Wednesday’s game with right oblique tightness, apparently does not need to be put on the injured list. The team indicated he could be back in the lineup on Thursday, after swinging the bat to test the injury on Wednesday. It’s also possible, however, that the Padres hold him out one more day, just to be safe.
The Padres will be going with their ace on Thursday, with Yu Darvish on the mound. Darvish is 5-1, 2.16 on the year, but he was rocked by Houston in his last start, giving up four earned runs in five innings. It was the first time since opening day that he’d allowed more than two runs in a game.
The Pick
There’s no place like home, and nothing like having your top pitcher on the mound and your best hitter available after another injury scare. While the trip didn’t end the way the Padres wanted, look for San Diego to shake it off at Petco and post a win over the Mets to start the series. I like the San Diego Padres for my MLB Picks.
MLB Pick: Padres (-179) with BetOnline (visit our BetOnline Review)
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