The San Diego Padres have all the pieces to easily make the playoffs this season. They have the pitching, defense and offense that most teams can only dream of. Unfortunately, they have run into a rough patch in the second half because of one major problematic area: their failure to hit with runners in scoring position. The best teams in baseball are highly successful because they get hits when they need to and the Padres are not proving themselves in that department.

Here is a look at how they have performed recently.

A Dry Spell

The second half has not been as consistent for the Padres as they may have expected. For a team that post All-Star break had six of their first nine series against teams under .500 and acquired four excellent players they have been rather underwhelming. They are playing just well enough to stay in the playoff hunt with a 16-14 record since July 22.

The offense has come alive in waves. They have scored double digit runs once in five of their nine series in the second half. Those five games combined for 56 runs. That is excellent for any team and it should not be surprising with the bats in their lineups.

Those five performances have accounted for 41% of their second half runs.

That stat is only possible because they have also had 16 games with three runs or less including three shutouts. Somehow they were able to climb out with victories in five of those games. It is extremely hard to win a lot of games when the offense is not getting contributions from any spot in the lineup.

What it all comes down to is their ability to bring home runs when there are runners in scoring position (RISP).

Sad Stats

During these 30 games they are hitting .236 (56-237) as a team with RISP. In there were eight games where they did not get a single hit with a RISP, a combined 0-40.

They only had two games where they hit .500 or better in those situations (4-8 and 7-12). They came on back-to-back games on August 9 & 10 to the San Francisco Giants. By removing those games their average comes down to an even worse .207 (45-217).

This led them to leave 228 men on base, an average of 7.6 per game. There were eight games where 10 or more men were stranded. The worst was 13 on August 13 in a 4-3 loss to the Washington Nationals. They also had a stretch where they left 10 or more on in three of five games.

It is quite unsettling to disect the individual player struggles during this stretch. There were 17 games where at least one player stranded four or more. Over half of the time there was at least one player in the lineup leaving a slew of baseunners. The most in any game was six which occurred on three occasions.

A Rough Weekend

This weekend the Washington Nationals came into town for a four game series. This was supposed to be the Padres chance to get some big wins and push ahead in the Wild Card standings. It did not quite turn out that way.

This was an incredible series for the majority of Padres pitching. The four starters (Darvish, Snell, Musgrove and Manaea) went 26.1 innings only allowing eight runs while striking out 24 batters.

Sadly, the offense did not aid their pitching too much.

The first two games started off with the Padres failing to capilaize and losing because of it. Both games went into the ninth tied and ultimately saw their new closer Josh Hader blow it. However, Hader might not have been in that situation if they had been able to get hits in big moments. They went a combined 2-12 with RISP and stranded 15 runners.

The Padres somehow snuck out of this series with a split. They won the final two games 2-1.

Game three was the worst performance of them all with a brutal 0-6 with RISP leaving 11 on base. Five different individual hitters stranded three men on base. Thankfully they got two solo homers from Josh Bell and Juan Soto to lead them to victory.

They wrapped up the series with another nail bitter. They didn’t have a whole lot of chances with runners in scoring position as they only went 1-3 with RISP and stranded six. The only hit with a RISP was Josh Bell who hit a two-run home run. It was another tough game, but the finished the series with a win.

One final thing that needs to talked about for the series is all of the walks. Nationals pitching allowed 19 free passes. Only two of those walks came around to score. Great teams are able to make their opponents pay for mistakes, instead the Padres constantly let the Nationals off the hook.

The Padres are in the second Wild Card spot, but not by much. If they cannot get their offense back on track they will have a tough final few weeks of the regular season. They are going to be playing the Dodgers nine more times this season and they will not be held down like the Nationals. The Padres have the offensive pieces to be great, but it just comes down to getting hits with men on base. Next up they have two at home against the Cleveland Guardians.

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