Your San Diego Padres are looking to finish what they started last season.
The Padres caught fire early last season after a playoff appearance in 2020, which made many pundits and baseball fans believe that they were bound to compete for the National League pennant, if not the World Series.
Well, that slipped away real quick in the second half of the season.
Padres ended up closing the second half of the season in disappointing fashion with an atrocious record to end the year.
Second baseman Jake Cronenworth says that it was many things that played into this collapse, including injuries that costed the team, in particular Fernando Tatis Jr. being in and out of the lineup due to his physical issues during the season.
“I don’t know if there’s one thing you can pinpoint,” Jake Cronenworth said. “I mean, even if you look at the first half, we were in it the whole time. Even in the division race, I know the Giants were doing their thing basically the entire year, but we’re right there for basically half the season. I think a lot of it was injuries —down a couple guys, (Fernando) Tatis was in and out. The hot and cold streaks, you want (hitters) to be all going at the same time, but you also don’t want them to all be going bad at the same time. It was a lot of things.”
The club is now being managed by Bob Melvin who will be looking into taking the Padres into new heights this season.
One of the players that has expressed appreciation for the positive impact that Melvin has already made is Eric Hosmer, first baseman for the Padres.
Hosmer says that their manager's experience will contribute to avoiding a massive collapse like the one that took place in the second half of last season.
However, the first baseman is still thinking about how the team could have prevented a downfall as tough as last year's, but says he is looking forward to coming back with a better equipped and more experienced roster this coming season.
“(In) the offseason, you have that first week or two to kind of slow everything down and look back and you kind of look back at certain things and you’re like, ‘Man, I could have just tweaked that a little bit or tweaked that.’ But when the season is going, it’s going so fast. So, I think that’s one of the perks of having Bob here is the experience and (his) having gone through that battle before, so you know whenever that first rough stretch hits, he’ll be well equipped for it. So, I think that’ll help.” Hosmer said.
