SAN DIEGO — The Padres, sudden masters of bad big league body language, have been playing as though they're trying to save the jobs of others rather than their own.
And in so doing they're providing proof that playoffs are not made during promising offseasons. Baseball is far too cold to produce champions in winter.
Real games have to be played — 162 of them, not 100 fewer, as MLB managed in COVID Year 2020, when a few teams really wanted it and too many didn't — and the Pads did want it.
I am not a doctor. The last time I even played doctor was as a teenager, and I wasn't very good at it.
Nor am I a physician of sport. But I can diagnose a few things, look at something and say if it's good or bad.
So, when frequently asked these days: "What's wrong with the Padres?" My answer is obviously simple. "They stink."
The cause of this unrehearsed athletic and mental flatulence — field, to clubhouse, to front office — is another matter. How can such a promising cocktail become sludge?
This was a club thriving on enthusiasm and derring-do — and yet with a sprinkling of patience. Now they don't seem to be trying.
Even worse, the most exciting team in the game has become boring.
The ugly snapshot came Tuesday, when they were down 1-0 in the middle of their horrible three-game failure at Colorado, when Manny Machado struck out swinging, the ball got past the catcher, and Manny strolled to the dugout, bat in hand.
Manager Jayce Tingler should have chased him to the clubhouse. Tingler should be sending many people to the clubhouse — maybe even his analytic-driven self.
Oh, and if Manny continues to get tossed over bad balls and strikes calls by umps who think the strike zone is either Alaska or Rhode Island, he might as well sit out the season.
No "I" in team. But there is an "m" and an "e."
Given the time, the urgency, the expectations, the talent and their price tag, their awful result vs. two of baseball's worst teams — Diamondbacks and Rockies — has to rank as perhaps the most pathetic in team history.
Bad teams, man. This wasn't playing down to an opponent, but simply terrible, uninspired baseball. The Pads are a pennant-worthy 17-18 this season vs. those guys after losing 6 of 7 on the trip.
They got no-hit in Arizona by a pitcher who'd never made a major league start and, after the game, Eric Hosmer told the team: "It was something that we needed. Maybe we needed something like this to get us going."
The wonder of it all is how Hosmer managed to drive that Mack Truck full of crap into the meeting. You can't polish a humiliating moment. Inspired, they went to Denver and got swept.
There have been injuries of course, especially to starting pitching, and best player Fernando Tatis Jr. has missed an inordinate amount of playing time.
The Dodgers have had injuries, no? In the Pads' case, it's been inconsistent everything, the package.
The attempt to get a starter at the trade deadline failed miserably. Jake "IL" Arrieta was a shot of the very long variety.
And their once-flourishing farm crop is thinning.
We have no idea what's going to happen over the next month or so, but this is beyond problematic. How does a team go from an ebullient, swag chain-spinning show to the barbiturate we had to swallow last week, with seemingly no care or sense of urgency.
I don't know if anyone will get to the bottom of it, or if heads will roll. I do know they're better than this — not great, never great, but better than this — and something drastically affected the mechanism along the way.
Maybe the machine can get proper service and get back on the road to glory. But I doubt it.
