:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/66883728/1171627106.jpg.0.jpg)
With the MLB season suspended due to the coronavirus outbreak, there are no baseball games and limited baseball news. So I’m creating a hypothetical season — complete with news and recaps — until baseball resumes. All news and recaps will have the hypothetical tag, so you can at least know when you’re suspending reality. And you can click “hypothetical season” above the headline to see everything that has happened in this “season.”
I don’t have much to tell you about this game so I’m not going to tell you much. Here’s what I will say: The San Diego Padres are a pretty decent team, and certainly a good bit better than the San Francisco Giants. Not because they’re doing anything magical or overperforming or getting lucky, but because they simply have a fair bit more talent than the Giants do. It happens.
It’s weird though. I’ve gotten used to the Padres being . . . well, not a laughing stock per se, but a feckless little brother of the Los Angeles Dodgers. A team that is never bottom-of-the-barrel bad, but never interesting or good.
In the last nine seasons, they’ve won between 66 and 77 games every single year. They haven’t made the postseason since 2006.
That might not all change this year, but things are clearly shifting in San Diego, and that should be abundantly clear to any Giants fans watching the teams match up. San Francisco doesn’t have a position player of Manny Machado or Fernando Tatis Jr.’s ability. They don’t have a starting pitcher of Chris Paddack’s value. They don’t have a reliever with Kirby Yates’ stature.
They are, quite simply, lacking in talent relative to the team we’ve grown accustomed to lacking in talent. Part of that is on the Giants for being bad, but part of it is a testament to the Padres, who are finally headed for some green grass. It’s just weird to see is all.
Anyway, Paddack is really good — a fair bit better than Jeff Samardzija — and Tatis is really good too, and seems to enjoy hitting home runs off of Samardzija. Who can blame him, really?
I guess what I’m trying to say is: The Padres beat the Giants 5-3, snapping the Giants three-game winning streak, and dropping San Francisco to 28-32.