Padres Daily: The Darvish question; offensive uptick; Merrill moves up

Good morning from St. Louis,

After Yu Darvish pitched Saturday in Washington, Mike Shildt pretty much declared it was go time.

“I think after this third start,” Shildt said that night, “he’s effectively back.”

Well, maybe not.

Darvish missed the strike zone too often and hit the center of the strike zone too often last night in his fourth start. And Shildt suggested afterward that Darvish not being sharp is because he is still finding his groove.

“I think that’s probably the primary thing,” the Padres manager said. “I mean, he did a pretty good job of getting to two strikes tonight. He just made some mistakes with two strikes. A couple walks to the nine-hole guy didn’t help. … It was really just about making consistent quality pitches. Just made a few too many mistakes, and they made him pay.”

You can read in my game story (here) from last night’s 9-7 loss to the Cardinals about how Darvish allowed eight runs in 3⅓ innings, dooming the Padres in a game in which their offense did its part.

The Padres are 1-3 in his starts, and he is 0-3.

Darvish has allowed 17 runs in 16 ⅔ innings. Opponents are batting .309 against him, and he has walked nine while striking out 11.

The man of many pitches is throwing strikes, but he is not finishing hitters. He is allowing a .226 batting average and has just a 30% strikeout rate after getting two strikes. He came into this season allowing a .135 average with two strikes and getting a third strike 50% of the time he got a second strike. The Cardinals were 3-for-9 with a home run, a double and a walk after Darvish got two strikes last night.

It was a unique path back from the elbow discomfort that shut Darvish down in spring training. We spent a lot of time over those three months during the buildup and shutdown and second buildup discussing that. But in short, he worked back to make a rehab start in mid-May before resting for a couple weeks due to discomfort and then worked back without pitching in another minor-league game.

Darvish was not having the excuse that he is rusty.

“I should be better,” he said through interpreter Shingo Horie. “They’ve given me four games to come back, and I’ve been doing this long enough — 21 years. So there’s not much excuse that I can make. Bottom line, I should be better than that.”

He essentially has to be.

The whole reason the Padres were not all that freaked out about Darvish missing so much time was that they trusted he was going to be a huge help late in the season and into October.

Now, there is nothing but questions about the three guys the Padres anticipated making up a solid postseason rotation.

• Will Darvish, who turns 39 in August, get back to being what he was last September and October?
• Will Michael King return as expected in mid-August and be the effective starter he was all last season and in his 10 starts this season before the nerve impingement sidelined him in May?
• Will Dylan Cease even be here? And if he is not traded, will he ever get on the kind of roll he got on three times last season?

Every team has questions. But that is an unsettling list of them for the Padres.

Heating up?

The Padres are 3-4 on this trip. They scored seven runs in their first victory, eight in the second victory and last night scored seven in a loss.

“It’s been a good road trip,” Manny Machado said, speaking specifically of the offense. “Obviously, the losses have been piling up, but the offense has been kind of clicking.”

Since they scored seven total runs in three games in Miami to start this week, it would be understandable if you didn’t quite see where Machado was coming from.

It can be difficult to discern progress when watching the Padres’ offense.

And it can be difficult to be too impressed when they have a good game like last night. Too often, it is followed by a run of games in which they can’t muster much.

But there are signs the hibernation is possibly ending.

• Seven players in the starting lineup got at least one hit last night. It was the fifth time in the past 11 games (since July 10) that at least seven starters got a hit. It had happened just 13 times in the 50 games before that (since May 16).
• The Padres had four extra-base hits last night for the fifth time in 11 games. They had at least that many extra-base hits in just six of their previous 50 games.
• Last night was the third time in the 10 games that Luis Arraez, Xander Bogaerts, Jackson Merrill, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Machado have all played together since July 10 that they all got at least one hit. They had all played together in 41 games between May 16 and July 9, and they all got hits in just three of those games.

We’ll see.

“We’re capable of doing it,” Tatis said. “It’s just a matter of repeating it and just staying consistent. Hardest thing in the game.”

Moving on up

Merrill was back in the cleanup spot last night for the first time since June 14.

He hit second or third for a time after that but as his struggles at the plate continued had only hit fifth or sixth since July 8.

“Jackson is swinging the bat well,” Shildt said of the change.

Merrill was 2-for-5, scored and drove in a run last night. He has hit in four straight games for the first time since an eight-game hitting streak that ended June 25. He has scored and/or driven in a run in all four of those games.

Merrill entered last night’s game having chased pitches outside the zone at just a 20.5% rate over the previous seven games, which is half as often as he did over his previous 60 games.

Magic Wandy

The most underrated member of the bullpen over the past couple months has been Wandy Peralta. And it is not close.

Last night was the second time in three games the lefty has entered a game with the bases loaded and two out, and both times he got the final out of the inning without allowing a runner to score.

Peralta has over his past 23 appearances stranded 24 of the 25 runners he has inherited. He has come in with at least one runner on base in 15 of those 23 games.

Now, last night was the second time in that span that Peralta stranded runners, then came back out in the next inning and allowed a run.

He has a 2.35 ERA over 23 innings in his past 23 appearances.

Tidbits

• Jeremiah Estrada worked a scoreless inning last night in his 49th appearance of the season. That moved into a tie with teammates Jason Adam and Adrian Morejón (and five others) for second-most appearances in the major leagues behind the Giants’ Tyler Rogers (50).
• Pitching a second straight day for the first time ever, Kyle Hart left the bases loaded to work a scoreless ninth. He has not allowed a run in 6⅔ innings out of the bullpen.
• Machado was 3-for-5 and hit his 19th home run of the season last night. He has six homers in his past 66 at-bats and 16 homers in his past 215 at-bats. He hit  just three home runs in his first 180 at-bats this season.
• Tatis was 3-for-5 and hit his 17th home run of the season last night. He has four home runs in his past 182 at-bats after beginning the season with 13 homers in his first 201 at-bats.
• Arraez was 2-for-4 with a walk last night and is batting .393 (11-for-28) during a seven-game hitting streak.
• Martín Maldonado’s single in the fourth inning extended his hitting streak to five games. Going 5-for-14 during the streak has raised his batting average 18 points (to .193).
• A day after touting the quality of Trenton Brooks’ at-bats when explaining why he went with him as a pinch-hitter on Wednesday, Shildt sent right-handed-hitting Jose Iglesias up to face a right-handed reliever in last night’s eighth inning rather than the lefty Brooks. I didn’t even ask Shildt about it, because it is not his fault he has such limited choices on the bench.
• Jake Cronenworth has now started more games at second base for the Padres than any player in franchise history. Read about that in my game preview (here).
• In conjunction with the Hall of Fame induction ceremony on Sunday, all Major League teams will be wearing retro caps with Hall of Fame patches on the side over the next three days. The Padres’ cap is glorious.

All right, that’s it for me.

Talk to you tomorrow.