Before Saturday night, Oakland Athletics 2015 was the last team that recorded five endings in the first 15 matches in one season.
They now have companies thanks to San Diego Padres. Their 2-0 formation of Colorado Rockies not only lets them match the A’s Sonny Gray, Scott Kazmir and Drew Pomeranz but enabled them to improve to 9-0 at home.
San Diego will strive for a third straight series of sweeps at Petco Park on Sunday when it has finished its weekend series with Colorado.
Pitching has been the most important ingredient in Padres 12-3 start. Four of their five starters have been part of combined closures and their bull, which owns MLB’s lowest earned average, has not allowed a run in eight of the team’s nine home games.
“Everything about the team,” said the right hand Nick Pivetta, who threw seven speechless innings into each of the Vitalkarna in Atlanta and Colorado. “Guys do what they do. We get runs when we need them, big games when we need them. It’s just a good team effort.”
Fernando Tatis Jr. gave San Diego the only driving it needed with a Leadoff Homer in the first on Saturday night, then retained the victory with a jumping catch of Kris Bryant’s two-out feed in ninth which was a ticket to the right field wall and may have plated two runs to bind the game.
“We have several ways to win a ball game,” Tatis said. “Right now we click into each area.”
Michael King (2-0, 4.05 era) will try to stretch Padres’ unbeaten line at Petco Park to 14 matches, which goes back to September last year. He comes from a 5-4 triumph Monday evening in athletics, which allows eight hits and three runs in 5 2/3 rounds with two walks and two strikes. King is 0-2 with a 9.82 era in three career appearance to Rockies.
Rockies will counteract with the left hand Kyle Freleland (0-2, 3.79), who last worked on Tuesday evening and fell 7-1 at home against Milwaukee. Freeland gave up eight hits and five runs in 6 1/3 rounds, no one went and whiffing five. He is 7-8 with a 4.56 era in 24 career games against San Diego.
Most Colorado starts have at least said on respectable, if not quite well, for a fair piece of the first 15 games. But the team simply has not produced offensively as one would expect. It has received an MLB-low 40 runs while he went 3-11.
Perhaps Rockie’s best player, midfielder Brenton Doyle, has been glued on the bench in the series’ first two matches with a quad bike. His status of Sunday’s game was not known after Saturday night’s competition.
Colorado has only seven hits in two matches, five of them by other Baseman Kyle Farmer. Several players believe that the team is trying too hard to succeed in a sport that can punish the maximum bet.
“In reality, all it takes is just to be yourself,” Freeland said. “Be the best version of yourself every day, pull after your teammates and work towards a single goal to win a baseball game.”
-Field level media
