“Padres–Right Guys-Right Time of Year”

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Pick any phrase at this hour and your are allowed to gloat

Small Market beats Big Apple

Good Pitching beats Good Hitting

Got Hot at Right Time

It’s a 28-man roster that wins games.

The Padres, against all the odds, beat the 100-win New York Mets at Citi Field.

They did it with Joe Musgrove’s 1-hit dominant pitching.
They did it with the bottom of the batting order getting big hits
They did it with strong defense
They did it with small ball antics we have hardly ever seen.

It was a (6-0) Friars win that made a big statement.

But it was a big picture you had to had to pay attention too.  It was like old time baseball, pitching, hitting and defense and everyone finding a way to contribute.

Enormous starts from Yu Darvish then Joe Musgrove

2-home runs by slumping Trent Grisham, then key hits, and a giant catch at the wall

Juan Soto, fighting back from a bad slump to get big hits

Austin Nola with key hits

Ha Seong-Kim with glove and bat making plays.

Musgrove was in the Mets head with that dominant outing and in their kitchen with unhittable stuff, so much so Buck Showalter asked the umpires to check for illegal substances.  He should have called for a doctor to find out where his Mets players’ hearts went.

There was games-man-ship action, with Bob Melvin getting his players to step out of the box to disrupt the flow of the Mets starting pitchers.

There was the 4-home run barrage against the Mets Max Scherzer.  There were the long ball and strike battles against Chris Bassitt.

Melvin used small ball tactics to extend innings.  The bottom of the batting order was superb.

The team that hit 169-home runs this year, did virtually nothing.  The New York batting order was shutdown.  The Padres grit shut up the Mets fans too at Citi Field.

It was a weekend of stunning surprises in this wildcard weekend

No one thought a slumping Padres team, that struggled the back half of the schedule, could come together as a team in the Friday-Saturday-Sunday series

The Cardinals got beat back to back at home by the Phillies, and never survived the 6-run rally in the 9th the Phillies authored in that first game.

Seattle was down 7-runs in Toronto and took out the Blue Jays

Cleveland’s nameless lineup took out a battered Tampa Bay team.

So now we head to the Divisional series and a rested Dodgers team, and the big bats of the Yankees and the blazing Atlanta Braves and Houston are waiting next.

What a weekend of fun by an up and down Padres team.

But they got healthy and got hot at the right time at Citi Field and they are moving on to Dodgers Stadium next.

It’s also the first installment on the payback these players owe Peter Seidler for all he invested in them financially.

The right guys playing like  a real team for the first time, at the right time of the year, playoff time

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