LOS ANGELES — They swung for the fences when they signed Manny Machado as a free agent ahead of the 2019 season. But the San Diego Padres weren’t ready to win just yet.
They swung hard again when traded for Mike Clevinger in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. Did not work.
Undeterred, they made a few more hacks and traded for high-profile starting pitchers Yu Darvish, Joe Musgrove and Blake Snell ahead of the 2021 season. No dice.
The Padres have been chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing, and pursuing their would-be rivals up north for what feels like an eternity. Still, they haven’t figured out the way around the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Now they get another chance.
Thanks to the sweet pull of baseball’s extended postseason, the Padres were again allowed to get off to an even start with the Dodgers to begin this National League divisional series. Regardless, the Dodgers won 14 of 19 against the Padres this year, besting them 109-47 overall and finishing 22 games ahead of them in the NL West.
“Look, we played these guys a lot this year and they passed us,” Padres manager Bob Melvin said ahead of Game 1 here on Tuesday. “So we’d like to think it’s our turn to win a series against them.
“It’s 0-0 and after a fantastic season where they’ve played great all year, they’ve played great all year. It’s just trying to take advantage of winning a series for the first time this year. Maybe we took some of the series we played against them before by the chin. Maybe that motivates you a bit more.”
Not long after he uttered those words, the Padres showed they still had that glass jaw in a 5-3 loss in Game 1 and once again found themselves in the familiar position of running after the Dodgers.
At the very least, the Padres thought they had Yu Darvish in line to start Game 2 to level Wednesday night’s series before heading to Game 3 and the much-anticipated first postseason series in front of fans at Petco Park on Friday since 2006 went home.
“I feel like we have the utmost faith in him,” said hitter Josh Bell, who arrived alongside superstar Juan Soto for this year’s close in San Diego as the Padres dialed in a blockbuster for the fourth straight year. targeting the Dodgers. “The last eight, ten starts, he’s been absolutely amazing.
“He’s exactly what we need to go in the right direction.”
Earlier this summer, San Diego owner Peter Seidler memorably referred to the Dodgers as “the dragon on the freeway we’re trying to kill.”
Like the Padres, Darvish bears his own scars.
He called Dodger Stadium home for half a season after Los Angeles acquired him from Texas at the 2017 trade deadline. He’s been pretty good in nine starts (4-3, 3.44 ERA) and then in two playoff starts, but he was thrashed by the Houston Astros in this year’s World Series. He was the losing pitcher in Game 3 after giving up four runs and six hits in just an inning and a half in Houston, where trash cans were popping during the cheating scandal. He then failed to make it out of the second inning in a Game 7 loss at Dodger Stadium.
“Obviously the stadium hasn’t changed,” said Darvish, who was 0-2 in that World Series with a 21.60 ERA and ended up being subjected to ugly boos and catcalls, through a translator at Dodger Stadium. “Not much has changed here. But as for me, I feel like a different pitcher than I did back then.”
When asked for specifics, Darvish, who was 16-8 with a 3.10 ERA and pitched six or more innings in 23 straight starts to finish the season, responded in more general terms.
“I think it comes with age, you know, going through the experience for sure,” he said. “You have this experience in 2017 and you can learn a lot from it. This will help you become a better pitcher.”
Since the Dodgers hadn’t played in six days after being awarded a bye in the wild card round, some thought they might be a bit rusty. Maybe their timing would be wrong.
Six pitches into the bottom of the first in Game 1, shortstop Trea Turner saw a meaty Clevinger fastball and deposited it over the left field fence. Later in the first, Will Smith ripped a double and Max Muncy followed with an RBI single.
There was also a very real possibility that the Padres would have sustained momentum after the Mets were dispatched over the weekend. Instead, the Dodgers scored two goals before the Padres even scored – and then pinned three more runs at the bottom of the third.
But four Padres reliefs combined to throw five and a third scoreless inning, knocking down the last 14 straight Dodgers. And they had the tie on base in the sixth when Los Angeles second baseman Gavin Lux reached to his left to make a beautiful move on a Wil Myers smash to start a double play at the end of the inning.
“Fantastic,” Melvin said of the charity work. “It’s 5-0 and suddenly it’s 5-3 and our guys came in and it was the end of it. We got a tie to the plate in the ninth inning. No morale wins, but the last part of the game was better for us than the first part.”
But while they keep coming back for more in their own personal game, Dungeons and Dragons, the Padres can’t fight their way out of the dungeon as the dragon breathes more and more fire.
Eventually it becomes the Harlem Globetrotters and the Washington Generals. One side dazzles and plays with the other. One side’s lot in life is to play the foil.
As the longest-serving Padre, Myers, who was acquired from Tampa Bay in a three-way trade ahead of the 2015 season, admits it seems like he’s been following the Dodgers forever.
“It does,” Myers said. “It definitely feels like it. Obviously they’ve had a lot of great years and they’ve had a lot of wins against me. But I’ll say this: if we win this series, it doesn’t matter. So let’s win this one.”
Both games at Petco Park this weekend are sold out. The Padres feel that if they can send this series back there 1-1, their victorious fans, who can’t help but develop an inferiority complex after watching the Dodgers nine of the last 10 NL West Crowns won will be far from louder than the Padres returning a game after elimination.
After beating the Mets at Citi Field and now playing at Dodger Stadium, the Padres have certainly seen what life is like on the other side in October. The sell-out crowd of 52,407 in Los Angeles on Tuesday was deafening at times. For a team that has set a franchise record with 111 wins this season, there seems to be no complacency here.
“That’s probably the funnest part of the night, to be honest,” Clevinger said of the roaring atmosphere. “The execution wasn’t the fun part of the night.”
It was a tough time for Clevinger, who is now 0-3 in four starts against the Dodgers this year with a 10.34 ERA this season as he started Game 1 of a divisional series against the Dodgers. But he struggled with a sore arm and retired after just 26 pitches. The Dodgers defeated the Padres in three games and Clevinger underwent surgery on Tommy John in November.
Two years later, as the Padres continue to chase the Dodgers, Clevinger is playing big roles in two playoff series. He came to San Diego on a nine-player deal, and when he started Tuesday’s Game 1, Cleveland was playing at Yankee Stadium with multiple parts from that nine-player deal: First baseman Josh Naylor and catcher Austin Hedges were both with the Guardians’ starting lineup, while Cal Quantrill was their starting pitcher. Owen Miller was hit, and Gabriel Arias is set to be Cleveland’s first shortstop as soon as next year.
In all, the Padres sent three of their top 10 prospects to Cleveland at the time.
And still they haven’t caught the Dodgers.