The San Diego Padres have emerged as one of baseball’s most disappointing teams in the first three months of the season, and that only got worse over the weekend.
The Padres dropped two of three games at home to the lowly Washington Nationals over the weekend, falling to 37-41 on the season. That is a huge disappointment, especially when the last-place Nationals came to town with a 28-46 record before winning twice.
Padres shortstop Xander Bogaerts had a pretty brutal assessment of Sunday’s 8-3 loss, pointing out that a team of San Diego’s quality should not be struggling to beat a rebuilding Nationals squad.
“C’mon, man. We’re playing the Nationals,” Bogaerts said, via Dennis Lin of The Athletic. “I don’t think they have playoff aspirations. I mean, they obviously have a young team and they fight. They do fight. But I wouldn’t say anyone picked the Nationals to be in the playoffs. So you have to beat the teams that you have to beat.”
Bogaerts is correct, which makes the state of the Padres even more frustrating. Losing against bad teams has been a theme for San Diego this season, as they also lost two of three at home a month ago to the last-place Kansas City Royals.
Manager Bob Melvin publicly called out the Padres back in May when they were struggling, but things have not turned around since then. If that does not change soon, they are going to have to seriously assess their playoff chances and potentially make big changes.
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