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Padres remain meek at plate, waste Nick Martinez's strong effort in loss to Rockies

Kevin Acee, The San Diego Union-Tribune on

Published in Basketball

SAN DIEGO — Not all that often has there been a collection of hitters at the top of one team’s lineup like Xander Bogaerts, Juan Soto and Manny Machado.

Eventually, it will matter.

And it will matter on a night like Friday, when a pitcher like Nick Martinez deserved better than he got from the defenders behind him and the hitters supposedly there to support him in what ended up being a 4-1 loss to the Colorado Rockies.

“When you only score one, it doesn’t look good,” manager Bob Melvin said. “But I thought he pitched really well.”

Martinez matched a career high by going seven innings in his season debut. He allowed four runs, which is twice as many as he would have allowed if not for a rare gaffe by Machado.

At some point — and there was still time for it to happen on Friday — the Padres will score a lot of runs. They will string together hits. They won’t go down quickly in at-bat after at-bat.

 

But two game into this season of great expectations, it has not.

The Padres have totaled three runs on 11 hits, are 0-for-14 with runners in scoring position.

“It’s a small sample,” Melvin said. “Look, everybody is trying to get their share of hits, drive in some runs. And when you’re down, even more so. If we get a couple runs early, probably relax a little bit more. But we’re trying to win as many games as we can here at home. We want to get off to a good start and we just haven’t done it.”

They have trailed almost the entirety of their two games, and they haven’t looked good doing it — that is, aside from their sharp pinstriped home uniforms Thursday and popping City Connect uniforms on Friday.

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