SAN DIEGO — Before following Jerry DiPoto from a job in the Angels’ front office for the top field job in Seattle, Scott Servais spent a large chunk of his early post-playing days as the Rangers’ senior director of player development. A pupil of his who eventually followed a similar path from a suit-and-tie gig to the top step of a big-league dugout stood before the Mariners’ 53-year-old manager just behind home plate on Friday afternoon at Petco Park, some four hours before the first pitch.
They talked for quite a while. They bumped fists. They went their separate ways to opposing dugouts.
“He’s one of the guys who broke me into the game,” Padres manager Jayce Tingler said. “A ton of respect for him. It was nice to touch base. We were just talking about the year, talking about what’s been good, what are some of the challenges and things like that.”
They’ve got a quite a few of those challenges in common.
As the Padres prepare to welcome their last COVID-19-impacted player back from the injured list, the Mariners pushed four relievers to the shelf in relation to a potential positive test, one that required the entire traveling party to retake COVID tests Friday morning, the results of which were pending as Servais met with reporters before the opener of a three-game series at Petco Park.
“We are not out of the woods in this instance,” he said.
That was the backdrop as Fernando Tatis Jr. became the fastest Padre to reach 50 career home runs as his team extended its winning streak to a season-high seven games with a 16-1 rout of the COVID-19-stricken Mariners. Jake Cronenworth added a career-high five RBIs that included a three-run homer.
Trent Grisham’s leadoff homer sparked a four-run first to back Chris Paddack’s first quality start (6 IP, 1 ER) since last September and Tatis added a three-run blast in the second inning, giving him homers in back-to-back games since returning from his own positive COVID-19 test on Wednesday.
The Padres’ contact-tracing casualties — Eric Hosmer, Jurickson Profar and Jorge Mateo — also have rejoined the fold, leaving Wil Myers as the last remaining absentee.
Myers was removed from the April 11 game at Coors Field because of a positive test and, like the others, has remained asymptomatic. The hope is he returns as soon as Saturday or Sunday, although Tingler acknowledged he can’t say for certain when that will occur.
Two negative tests are among the hoops that have to be jumped through before the Padres’ right fielder can return.
“We’re really out of the loop,” Tingler said. “We get a letter, we get an email, we get a call. At least that’s how it went the last go-round and then cleared from our doctors and then it goes to the joint committee. There’s a whole process. I haven’t gotten anything yet … but I did hear potentially Saturday or Sunday.
“Again, you’re just waiting for the call.”
Some of those hoops would be removed from that circus of red tape if the Padres could join the 14 teams that have had 85% of their traveling party fully vaccinated, allowing the relaxation of the strictest of MLB’s COVID-19 protocols. As it stands now, a fully vaccinated player who is traced to a positive test but does not have symptoms does not have to quarantine for seven days, as must have been the case for Hosmer, Profar and Mateo.
The front office’s position has been to educate their players and let them make their decision free of undue influence.
“I think we’re hopeful it will happen,” Tingler said of his team approaching the 85% threshold. “We’re incredibly close. Incredibly close. You don’t want to throw empty promises or anything out there. I’m optimistic that it will happen. I really am. Will it? Can I guarantee it? No, but we’re incredibly close and I believe it’s going to happen, but we’ll just have to wait and see.”
The more immediate threshold to be crossed is Myers’ impending return and what that might mean for the outfield mix as June approaches.
On Friday, Profar was again in the outfield, where he became an everyday option in 2020 as Tommy Pham worked his way back from a broken hamate bone. Pham, the 33-year-old veteran, is fighting himself more than anything this year, although a career-worst batting average on balls in play (.224) is weighing down an average exit velocity (90.3 mph) that doesn’t rank anywhere near the bottom 3-percent of the majors as his .182 batting average did entering the weekend.
In the first inning Friday, Pham’s 109 mph did something quite rare: It found grass in left field, as his ninth RBI staked the Padres to 4-1 lead.
The next inning, Pham’s 103 mph drive to right caromed off the wall for a run-scoring triple, just his third extra-base hit this year.
The Padres hope it’s the beginning of a trend as they try to chase down the San Francisco Giants atop the NL West and stay a step (or two or three if they can swing it) ahead of the defending world champion Los Angeles Dodgers.
“Of course we want to see him start to pick it up and be a little bit more productive at the plate,” Tingler said of Pham. “There’s no doubt about that, but with that being said right now he’s going to get opportunity. The work ethic is incredible. There’s a history there. But there’s no doubt, and that’s not just for Pham, that’s for all our guys. That’s the expectation of playing winning baseball. We’ve got to produce. For the position players, we’ve got to have tough at-bats. We’ve got to square balls up. We’ve got to get on base. We’ve got to run the bases and we’ve certainly got to play defense.
“That’s the expectation. If we want to play winning baseball, we need a collective group doing that.”
