My Padres' 110 Game Update

The season is more than 2/3 completed now, and My Padres still reside in first place, by the slimmest of margins and mostly because the other NL West teams are just as bad as the Padres are.

In the last 10 games, the scores and starting pitching are:

10-3 at LA Park started and won
8-9 (10) at Colo Williams started, Trevor blew the save
1-3 at Colo Hensley started, and lost
4-2 at Colo Young started and won, Trevor saved
1-3 at Colo Thompson started and lost
0-1 Houston Peavy started and lost
1-6 Houston Williams started and lost
5-2 Houston Hensley started and won, Trevor saved
2-6 Wash Young started and lost
6-3 Wash Thompson started, Trevor saved

The Friars were 4 wins and 6 losses in this 10 game segment, scoring 38 runs and giving up 38 runs. On the season they are 27-31 at home, 30-22 on the road and 57 wins 53 losses overall. Over the last 40 games, they have 20 wins and 20 losses. They lead the Snakes and Dodgers by 2 games.

The team batting average is 0.265 (was 0.265 after 100 games) and ranks 8th in the NL; has 109 home runs (was 100), ranking 8th;
scored 501 runs (ranks 15th) and given up 496; has a 4.17 team ERA (was 4.21), ranks 3rd in NL, opponents have a 4.24 ERA.

I still think that 87 wins will take the NL West. The bad news is that the team needs to go 30 and 22 to get there (the good news is that the others need to go 32 and 20 to get there). All of the other NL West teams have had long losing streaks but the Pads haven't.

Did the Friars improve themselves with the acquisition of Todd Walker to play 3B? Nope...he does hit well, but is a defensive liability. The Dodgers, Giants and Snakes all improved themselves via trades in the last two weeks.

There is good news - Dave Roberts and Adrian Gonzalez are hitting over 0.300, and the starting pitching is pretty stable. They need to avoid injuries (Greene just went down for a week) and firm up the relievers. The team needs to score more runs in order to win the close low-scoring games.

It will be an interesting playoff run.