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John Gennaro
San Diego Padres
Padres’ season on the brink after missed chances and a familiar decision to bunt in Game 1 loss - The Athletic
“That’s on my own,” Merrill said of his fourth-inning decision to bunt. “Some people can fault me for it if they want, but I don’t care. I’m trying to play baseball and just advance runners and get people in scoring position.”
Added Shildt: “We got a chance to extend the lead … and we just couldn’t. You know, we got our sac fly with two outs.”
Pivetta is nails, but Padres missing a hammer in Game 1 vs. Cubs - MLB.com
“Tomorrow’s it,” said Jake Cronenworth. “Forget about what happened today. … Almost everybody in this room has been in a must-win game.”
So the music still played, even after a gut-punch of a Game 1 loss. Based on recent Wild Card Series history, the odds are now clearly stacked against these Padres. No team to lose Game 1 on the road has ever even rallied to win a Game 2. In the history of best-of-three postseason series, only two teams out of 20 have rallied from an 0-1 deficit to win the series.
Padres’ ‘backs are up against the wall’ after losing Wild Card Series opener - San Diego Union-Tribune
The Padres finished the regular season with the third-fewest home runs in the major leagues. Their batting average with runners in scoring position was third-lowest among the 12 teams that made the postseason, and they scored the second-fewest runs among playoff teams.
The formula of scoring just enough and leaning on a pitching staff that had MLB’s third-best ERA got the Padres the bulk of their 90 victories during the regular season.
It also left them vulnerable to teams that could score quickly, such as the Cubs, who hit the third-most home runs in the NL.
Back-to-Back Home Runs Spur Cubs’ Game 1 Win - FanGraphs
The Merrill sac bunt after the Machado leadoff walk in the fourth was curious, considering both the game state (it tends to be correct to play for multiple runs early in the game rather than give up an out to play for just one) and that Merrill had doubled off of Boyd in his previous at-bat. After the game, Padres manager Mike Shildt responded to a question about the bunt, saying, “Jackson was on his own there, seeing the game, getting it over.”
The Padres led the league in sacrifice bunts during the regular season; it’s more a part of Shildt’s style than is typical in the modern game, and probably more than is advisable both in an analytical vacuum and for a lineup as deep as San Diego’s. It’s possible Merrill was trying to take advantage of how deep Matt Shaw was playing at third base, that he was bunting for a hit rather than an explicit sacrifice, but it didn’t work out. That stands out as the only potentially detrimental decision made in an otherwise cleanly-played baseball game.
