SAN DIEGO — As the men who run the team from second-floor offices at Petco Park worked to make the San Diego Padres better in advance of Friday’s trade deadline, the players already on the team went about the business of trying to be better.
Especially against teams that are clearly inferior.
The Padres entered Thursday’s series opener against the Colorado Rockies with a 28-25 record against teams with a losing record and a 31-20 record against teams at .500 or above.
Joe Musgrove, with his best start in more than a month, went a long way toward improving that mark by throwing seven scoreless innings, and the Padres got a run on their second at-bat and two more on the second-to-last at-bat in a 3-0 victory. The loss dropped the Rockies to 44-59, yet they had split their first 12 games against the Padres.
“Very important game, very important series for us,” manager Jayce Tingler said Thursday afternoon. “We’ve been going back and forth with the Rockies.”
Back-to-back doubles by Tommy Pham and Fernando Tatis Jr. started the bottom of the first before Rockies left-hander Kyle Freeland, who would go six innings, got the next three batters.
After Drew Pomeranz pitched the eighth for the Padres, Jake Cronenworth’s two-out, two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth put them up 3-0 before Mark Melancon saved his 32nd game.
Musgrove, who saw his ERA swell from 2.22 to 3.13 over his previous five starts, got out of minor trouble in the first and fourth innings and after a leadoff walk in the fifth inning retired the final nine batters he faced. He finished with 11 strikeouts, his highest total in 12 starts.
The Padres’ inability to add on has plagued them for large stretches of the year.
Tingler pointed to the team’s peaks and valleys as the overriding issue in their being unable to sustain winning stretches, regardless of the quality of opponent.
“I think for the most part,” he said, “we’ve been relatively inconsistent throughout the year.”
