After this week’s homestand against the Braves and Dodgers, some musings:

• After the 4-5 road trip, coming home to start a 20 game in 21 day stretch with the first 13 against teams currently in the playoff picture (the Braves, Dodgers, Cubs and Dodgers again), you would have been happy with a 4-2 start against the Braves and Dodgers. Of course, you wouldn’t have thought it would be a sweep of the Braves and losing another series at home 1-2 against the Dodgers.
• The Dodgers continue to dominate the Padres and the two losses continue to show the issues this year’s team is having. The starting pitching isn’t getting any length and it seems to be an inning where it just gets away from while the offense can’t seem to get the big hit, a stark contrast to the Dodgers who seem to get the big hits when they need them.
• There was the 9 run sixth inning where Randy Vasquez gave up 7 (4 earned) of the runs in the inning in yesterday’s game. This was after the Padres started with Kyle Hart as an opener for two innings, so Vasquez couldn’t even make it through four full innings.
• Then in the bottom of the 7th inning, when the Padres had the bases loaded with one out, down 10-3 with Jackson Merrill and Manny Machado up to make things interesting, neither came through with Merrill striking out while Machado grounded into a force out. Whereas in the 9 run sixth inning, the Dodgers kept getting hits and moving the line.
• Then in today’s game, in the 5th inning, Michael King started by walking the #8 hitter Freeland, getting an out on a sacrifice bunt that ended up being a pop up, walking Ohtani, hitting Pages, walking Freeman to score a run (which should have been strike 3 on ball 4 that the Padres should have challenged since they had both challenges left) and then Betts hitting a two run double to make it 4-1.
• Meanwhile, in the bottom of the 8th, the Padres had runners on 1st and 2nd with one out and on the first pitch Miguel Andujar grounds into an inning-ending double play. Bottom of the 9th with a runner on 1st and 1 out, Fernando Tatis Jr grounded into a game-ending double play.
• Even if Joe Musgrove and Nick Pivetta come back, I’m not sure this assortment of starting pitching the Padres have will be able to continue to patch work through enough innings to not overburden the elite bullpen. But what can you realistically get on the trade market by trading what’s left of the farm system? I get AJ is always able to trade every year but does it really make sense to keep doing this and not develop some homegrown players that can come up to help the team?
• As far as the hitting, Tatis has been hitting more consistently since the beginning of June and Machado has been hitting better the past 10 days. Even if you trade for a decent hitter (and considering you want to trade for starting pitching, how much can you really offer?), can they really make that much of an impact? All the hitters we’ve traded over the past five years from pick-ups like Adam Frazier, Brandon Drury, Ryan O’Hearn, Ramon Laureano, Josh Bell and even Juan Soto have all struggled here the rest of the season after their trades. These guys all have added length to the lineup but we’d all like to see moves that jumpstart the offense the way we saw with Seattle last year when they added Eugenio Suarez and Josh Naylor. But even in 2022, with Soto, Bell and Drury added, the team only went 29-27 down the stretch and we were still having the same complaints about the offense. So you pretty much need the current team to start hitting and anyone you would add is to complement it.