The San Diego Padres went into the season hoping to compete with the Dodgers for the NL West title. On paper, there’s plenty of talent, and they spent big to have free agent Xander Bogaerts join Juan Soto, Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr. on roster.
This team really should not be battling it out with the Rockies at the bottom of the NL West. But after watching their first play in the field of Thursday’s game against the Washington Nationals, it’s easy to see why the Padres are struggling.
They’re making mistakes that contending teams simply do not make.
In the bottom of the first inning, Padres third baseman Ha-Seong Kim made a sweet diving effort on a line drive off the bat of Lane Thomas but couldn’t make the catch.
Jake Cronenworth thought this ball was caught so he wasn't covering first.
Lane Thomas would become the game's opening run pic.twitter.com/e1qD8oDrQq
— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) May 25, 2023
First baseman Jake Cronenworth assumed that Kim made the catch, so he didn’t go to first base to cover the bag. That ended up being quite the blunder as Kim came up firing to first with Cronenworth watching the ball sail by the empty bag.
Even if it seemed like Kim made the catch initially, Cronenworth has to realize that an out wasn’t called and be at first for the throw. There’s an umpire at third base for a reason, after all.
Thomas advanced to second on the error — which unfortunately was charged to Kim — and would later score in the inning.
Fans also had thoughts on the blunder.
This was how Twitter reacted
First watched an MLB game in 1998 and here's another play I've never seen before. https://t.co/BBCNqTYp0Y
— Martin Gardner (@mglovesfun) May 25, 2023
padres have become embarrassinggg https://t.co/4gPBOLlorH
— aly ♔ (@uhhIyssa) May 25, 2023
This is Padresing https://t.co/R4GIEPqiD5
— Luke Hall (@OakTreeStatus) May 25, 2023
seeing the padres fail is cool https://t.co/aMSWW5Trkr
— morrow (@garfshots) May 25, 2023
Add it to the 2023 highlight reel https://t.co/74rerbvw7W
— Coach (@chicogrande33) May 25, 2023
The Padres are such a sad baseball team https://t.co/qjmzZI1lcO
— Cameron Brown (@golfer4life97) May 25, 2023
