SAN DIEGO -- No scoreboard watching in San Diego on Thursday night. Only Padres baseball -- a chance to move up with a win and down with a loss.
They’re moving up.\n\nSan Diego won its series opener against the Rockies at Petco Park, 2-0, behind six brilliant innings from
The objective directly in front of them is hosting a National League Wild Card Series. To do that, they’d need to catch the Dodgers (2 1/2 back) in the NL West, or at least reel in the Cubs (3 1/2 back) for the top Wild Card spot.\n\nOn the flip side, the Padres increased their lead to 5 1/2 games over both the Giants and Reds, the two teams currently on the outside of the playoff picture looking in. A Padres postseason clinch is getting closer.
Here are three takeaways from an important win for the Padres:\n\n**Vásquez earning himself a postseason role** \nThe sample size is no longer small. Vásquez has appeared in 25 games this season (24 starts), and his ERA is 3.72. In a rotation full of big names, there’s a case to make -- a very strong one -- that he’s been the Padres’ second best starter this year, behind only Nick Pivetta.\n\nVásquez’s peripheral numbers tell a different story. His FIP -- which attempts to remove batted ball luck from the ERA equation -- is 4.93. But even still, this suddenly looks like a different version of Vásquez.
He was outstanding on Thursday, striking out nine Rockies to set a career high. He didn’t walk any. (Yes, the very same Randy Vásquez, whose K/BB ratio was hovering around 1 into mid-June.) If the Padres keep getting this version of Vásquez, they’re going to need to start asking some very interesting questions about where he fits.\n\nPresumably, Pivetta and Michael King -- in some order -- would get Games 1 and 2 in a potential Wild Card Series. The main options for the third spot are Dylan Cease and Yu Darvish. They’ve both been jarringly inconsistent this season.\n\nVásquez, meanwhile, hasn’t been given the same leash as those two. But the Padres wouldn’t need him working deep into playoff games, given the bullpen they’ve built. If Vásquez can ace his next test -- a start against the Mets in a pseudo-playoff atmosphere next week -- it might get interesting. At the very least, he’s probably earning himself a spot on the postseason roster as a long man.\n\n“It really just comes down to whatever they need from me,” Vásquez said through interpreter Pedro Gutierrez. “I’ll be ready for that.\"\n\n**Arraez’s batting-title longshot** \nThere’s no way around it; it’s been a down year for
**Is Merrill’s slug back?** \nSince