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“Padres Pitching Problems-Everywhere”

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Root-root-root for the home team. That’s what the old time baseball chant is.

Not here in San Diego, not right now.

Not after the Padres got sand-blasted three straight games by the Dodgers. Now the Friars go on the road to face the first place Arizona Diamondbacks, and the Colorado Rockies and their humidor home run balls at Coors Field.

I told you when spring training opened, the Padres didn’t have enough starting pitching. I recall writing the 10-potential starters they had brought to camp, had a combined (5.62-ERA) a year ago.

I told you opening day of my fears that they still did not have enough arms in that rotation, and then Chris Young walked out, Dinelson Lamet got bad news, and they proceeded to waste the opening home stand, going (1-6) to start all this.

Now the Dodgers drill them, and off they go on another road trip, where the D-backs and Rockies have a history of trashing pitching in their ballparks.

Thank goodness for Joey Luchessi, assuming the role of ace, with a 1.66-ERA in his first group of starts. Good stuff, better composure. Doing here what he did for 3-seasons in the minors.

Clayton Richard grinds thru starts and will give you everything he has. Some outings good, sometimes he gets banged around. But his ERA is a gaudy (5.73).

Tyson Ross, proven veteran, so far so good, and has reclaimed his dominance and competitive fire post blood clot surgery. The veteran ha a (3.50) ERA.

Beyond that, problems everywhere.

Bryan Mitchell has a crackling fastball, but all types of location problems. A glaring (5.09-ERA), even worse, it seems like he’s pitching from the stretch the minute he leaves the dugout. He’s allowed 37-baserunners in 19-innings, and struggles nightly.

Luis Perdomo got torched by the Dodgers, probably his worst outing of his San Diego career. The problem, he’s had many more bad outings than good ones in the last half of last year and the start of this season. An ERA that is now at (8.36)

And there is no Lamet coming back, maybe not till 2020.

We’re just 3-weeks into the season, and the starting pitching is so shoddy, the bullpen has been used 66-times in the first 19-games. They had the second most innings working out of the pen in all of baseball.

The team leads the National League in unearned runs allowed (18) leading into last night’s game, so defensive issues keep popping up..

And of course the team, which showed us a 20-strikeout night on Tuesday, has also struck out a whopping 197-times in the first 19-games, again leading all of baseball.

There are no easy answers to all this.

Young college lefty Eric Lauer is likely the next one to be called up, but who knows if he is really ready, though he has a (3.00-ERA) in the hitter happy Pacific Coast League. Even better, is Brett Kennedy’s (1.04-ERA) but he has yet to be called up last year or this year.

The first round pick of a couple of years ago, Calvin Quantriill is at San Antonio, has a good ERA, (1.23) but has walked a bunch of batters, and put a lot of runners on base.

Ex-Royal Matt Strahm is being flipped back to a starter, and is at (3>68) at Class AA, but is coming off knee surgery, and needs to build innings, and does not appear major league ready.

Yes the future is better than today, but with this lousy start, we are looking at a lot of bad baseball this summer. The Friars have pissed away two homesteads already.

You see the crowds for the Dodgers series-not good. And remember they gave up a 3-game homestead with the Dodgers to go play in Mexico too.

I had hoped (81-81) was possible as the season opened, but that was before Lamet got hurt, and Perdomo stopped getting people out.

Any ideas? AJ Preller could use some advice. The suggestion box is open.

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