Padres experience June gloom
SAN DIEGO -- They call it June gloom, and it's normally just an annoying little trick on tourists and conventioneers who come to town and wonder who took the "sunny" out of sunny Southern California.
Locals just roll with it, sort of like they rolled with the relatively mild earthquake that shook some of the White Sox out of their beds Sunday morning. Folks around here know things will heat up plenty in August and September.
For the Padres, June gloom has been more a state of mind and body, and a 5-8 mark on their longest homestand of the season is the tangible result.
All they can do as they head to the sunnier climes of Detroit and Minnesota is roll with it, knowing things will heat up again soon enough.
"We're not happy with this homestand," Padres manager Bruce Bochy said Sunday after his club dropped an 8-5 decision in 10 innings to the world-beating White Sox. "It was a little tough between injury and illness, but it was just a rough homestand, to be honest. We have to get back on track."
Thing is, they're not that far off track. The Padres remain a team built for the long haul of the race to October, and moving on past this homestand is just another step along the marathon route.
The real silver lining of this dose of June gloom can be found in your NL West standings, where the Padres actually maintain the same 2 1/2-game lead they had when they came home for the Memorial Day weekend.
"We're still in first place, which is an exciting thing to be talking about with the kind of homestand we had," said closer Trevor Hoffman, who took Sunday's loss in a non-save situation.
Certainly, this 3-8 start to June seems darker placed next to the best month in franchise history. The Padres were monsters in May, winning 22 games and grabbing hold of the division lead.
Then a rampant upper-respiratory infection that hit no less than one-third of the Padres' clubhouse stung the club early in the homestand, and a lot of good opposing pitching came across their home plate late.
By the closing weekend, however, the bug was pretty well exorcised but the Padres' play hadn't quite recovered, still looking a bit sluggish. So Bochy had a little talk with the boys.
"We met and said we've just got to get back to playing our type of ball again," Bochy said. "We'd been getting away from that a little bit. Especially when you're facing the pitching we've been facing, you've got to do the little things."
Make no mistake: Any words Bochy shared with his club were said in a different tone and at a lower volume than the wisdom he shared with them April 27, when he rattled the walls of the visitors' clubhouse at SBC Park following a particularly brutal loss to the Giants.
This might as well be a different team on a different baseball planet.
"We're playing much better baseball now than we were then," said Phil Nevin.
Nevin's three-run blast in the first inning Sunday was a welcome one for a team that had scored eight runs in its previous six games, including two shutouts. Far from being a reprise of last year's struggles with their home venue, this is just about your normal ebb and flow of the season, Nevin said.
"Our bats are going to go hot and cold -- that's just the way baseball is," Nevin said. "What doesn't slump is being aggressive and playing smart baseball. We might have gotten away from that for a couple of days, but I thought today's game could have gone either way."
That it didn't go the Padres' way Sunday shouldn't be sending the locals running to the nearest doorway, preparing for an impending disaster.
"This is no time to get down and push the panic button, just like it wasn't time to do that in April," Hoffman said.
Perhaps the toughest thing for the Padres to swallow about this rough couple of weeks at home is that they came into this homestand with a remarkable 16-4 mark at PETCO Park, where their lackluster 42-39 record in 2004 was costly to the team's playoff hopes. This club has proven to be much better suited to its environs, and a 21-12 home mark still looks pretty good about now.
That said, getting on a plane to go somewhere else might not be a bad thing. Getting a little healthier with the return of Dave Roberts and Geoff Blum to the lineup probably wouldn't hurt, either.
"We love playing at home," Bochy said. "I think everybody prefers to play at home. But sometimes after a long homestand, it's just time to hit the road."
That time is now for the Padres, and they'll be heading out of San Diego looking for a little sun to shine on their first-place shoulders again.
Source: http://sandiego.padres.mlb.com/
Locals just roll with it, sort of like they rolled with the relatively mild earthquake that shook some of the White Sox out of their beds Sunday morning. Folks around here know things will heat up plenty in August and September.
For the Padres, June gloom has been more a state of mind and body, and a 5-8 mark on their longest homestand of the season is the tangible result.
All they can do as they head to the sunnier climes of Detroit and Minnesota is roll with it, knowing things will heat up again soon enough.
"We're not happy with this homestand," Padres manager Bruce Bochy said Sunday after his club dropped an 8-5 decision in 10 innings to the world-beating White Sox. "It was a little tough between injury and illness, but it was just a rough homestand, to be honest. We have to get back on track."
Thing is, they're not that far off track. The Padres remain a team built for the long haul of the race to October, and moving on past this homestand is just another step along the marathon route.
The real silver lining of this dose of June gloom can be found in your NL West standings, where the Padres actually maintain the same 2 1/2-game lead they had when they came home for the Memorial Day weekend.
"We're still in first place, which is an exciting thing to be talking about with the kind of homestand we had," said closer Trevor Hoffman, who took Sunday's loss in a non-save situation.
Certainly, this 3-8 start to June seems darker placed next to the best month in franchise history. The Padres were monsters in May, winning 22 games and grabbing hold of the division lead.
Then a rampant upper-respiratory infection that hit no less than one-third of the Padres' clubhouse stung the club early in the homestand, and a lot of good opposing pitching came across their home plate late.
By the closing weekend, however, the bug was pretty well exorcised but the Padres' play hadn't quite recovered, still looking a bit sluggish. So Bochy had a little talk with the boys.
"We met and said we've just got to get back to playing our type of ball again," Bochy said. "We'd been getting away from that a little bit. Especially when you're facing the pitching we've been facing, you've got to do the little things."
Make no mistake: Any words Bochy shared with his club were said in a different tone and at a lower volume than the wisdom he shared with them April 27, when he rattled the walls of the visitors' clubhouse at SBC Park following a particularly brutal loss to the Giants.
This might as well be a different team on a different baseball planet.
"We're playing much better baseball now than we were then," said Phil Nevin.
Nevin's three-run blast in the first inning Sunday was a welcome one for a team that had scored eight runs in its previous six games, including two shutouts. Far from being a reprise of last year's struggles with their home venue, this is just about your normal ebb and flow of the season, Nevin said.
"Our bats are going to go hot and cold -- that's just the way baseball is," Nevin said. "What doesn't slump is being aggressive and playing smart baseball. We might have gotten away from that for a couple of days, but I thought today's game could have gone either way."
That it didn't go the Padres' way Sunday shouldn't be sending the locals running to the nearest doorway, preparing for an impending disaster.
"This is no time to get down and push the panic button, just like it wasn't time to do that in April," Hoffman said.
Perhaps the toughest thing for the Padres to swallow about this rough couple of weeks at home is that they came into this homestand with a remarkable 16-4 mark at PETCO Park, where their lackluster 42-39 record in 2004 was costly to the team's playoff hopes. This club has proven to be much better suited to its environs, and a 21-12 home mark still looks pretty good about now.
That said, getting on a plane to go somewhere else might not be a bad thing. Getting a little healthier with the return of Dave Roberts and Geoff Blum to the lineup probably wouldn't hurt, either.
"We love playing at home," Bochy said. "I think everybody prefers to play at home. But sometimes after a long homestand, it's just time to hit the road."
That time is now for the Padres, and they'll be heading out of San Diego looking for a little sun to shine on their first-place shoulders again.
Source: http://sandiego.padres.mlb.com/
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