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Padres lose wild card ground after sweep in Tampa, capped by dropped fly ball
RePadres lose wild card ground after sweep in Tampa, capped by dropped fly ball
San Diego fell 5-4 to Tampa Bay in 11 innings Sunday, completing a three-game sweep that knocked the Padres out of playoff position. A dropped fly ball in the ninth turned a would-be game-ending out into a game-tying home run.
The San Diego Padres left Tampa Bay on Sunday night having lost all three games to the Rays, and the final defeat came in the most painful way imaginable. A routine fly ball that should have ended the game instead became a game-tying home run, and the Padres eventually fell 5-4 in 11 innings. The loss dropped San Diego to 72-65 and, with the season ending today, would leave them out of the postseason for the first time in three years.
The decisive sequence began in the bottom of the ninth inning. The Padres held a 3-1 lead with closer Mason Miller on the mound. Junior Caminero led off with a single, but Miller struck out Liam Hicks and got Chandler Simpson to line out. With two outs, Jonny DeLuca hit a fly ball to left field. Samad Taylor tracked it into the corner, ran into the fence, caught the ball, and then dropped it. The ball went over the fence, tying the game at 3-3.
The play was as fluky as it was costly. DeLuca's ball left the bat at 90.7 mph and traveled 319 feet, with Taylor's help. According to Statcast, a hit with those exact characteristics is an out 99 percent of the time. It is a home run in exactly one of the 30 Major League Baseball stadiums, and that stadium happened to be Tropicana Field on this particular evening.
San Diego did not recover. In the 11th inning, Ty France gave the Padres a 4-3 lead with a sacrifice fly. Reliever David Morgan struck out Caminero to start the bottom of the inning, but Hicks singled, Simpson walked, and Hicks stole second to set up a double-play situation. DeLuca then hit a weak grounder to shortstop Xander Bogaerts, who had an easy play at home for the second out. Bogaerts, typically sure-handed, flubbed the throw, tying the game and putting the winning run at third. Jorge Mateo followed with a walk-off single to left, completing the sweep.
The weekend was a sharp reversal for a team that had been surging. Entering the series, San Diego had gone 16-8 in August, including a sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers. Fernando Tatis Jr. had broken out of a power drought, Jackson Merrill had turned his season around, and Ty France had been a consistent offensive force. The front office had also bolstered the pitching staff, trading for starters Casey Mize and Robbie Ray, and Miller had looked dominant on the mound.
The loss leaves the Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks separated by just half a game in the race for the final National League wild card spot. The two teams are tied in the loss column, and they finish the regular season with a three-game series against each other in San Diego. The season series between the two is tied at five games apiece, meaning that final series will determine the tiebreaker.
For Padres fans, the missed opportunity in Tampa will sting for a while. For neutral observers, the wild card race just became considerably more compelling.
