Padres First Series

The first series of the 2011 season for the San Diego Padres is officially history. The Padres won the 3 game series (2-1) as they kicked off their season against the National League Central’s St. Louis Cardinals. All things considered I am pleased with the performance of the team and its new players.

Going into this series I honestly was not expecting a lot. I thought that the Padres were going to lose their opening series for a couple of reasons. First, the Padres’ number one pitcher Mat Latos is starting the season on the 15 day disabled list and was not available to pitch on opening day against the Cardinal’s number one pitcher Chris Carpenter, who when healthy is a threat to win the Cy Young Award very year. Second, I thought that Albert Pujols was going to give the Padres a tough time in this series. Pujols is the best player in baseball and he is currently in a contract year (which means he will be a free agent at the end of the season if he does not sign a new deal with the Cardinals), and I thought he was going to make a statement to start the season but fortunately I was wrong. And finally, the Padres historically have not played well in St. Louis. The Padres had not swept the Cardinals in St. Louis since 1980 so it has been a generation’s time since the Padres have had any great success.

There were plenty of positives that came out of this series. Pitching was a positive because the pitching staff did not give up a lot of runs. The Padres did not allow more than three runs in their first three games. Another positive was the emergence of the new players like Cameron Maybin. Maybin made his presence known in his Padres debut when with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning he tied the game with a solo homerun to force extra innings.

The one negative I saw was timely hitting. In game three of the series the Padres had the bases loaded with one out on two separate occasions and could not produce a run. The Padres are going to need clutch hitting as the season continues if they want to give themselves a shot at the division.