The San Diego Padres look to make the leap from cellar-dweller in the National League West to a playoff contender in 2020.
They’re off to a 6-4 start and will host the seven-consecutive division champion Los Angeles Dodgers in a three-game series at Petco Park from Aug. 3-5.
The Padres will be sending their top three pitchers, Chris Paddack, Dinelson Lamet, and Garrett Richards, to the mound to face the 7-3 Dodgers.
The trio is dominating through two starts apiece, combining for a 2.27 ERA.
Paddack threw six innings, allowing one run on six hits against the San Francisco Giants on July 29. He also had six strikeouts. He’ll face Dodgers’ ace Walker Buehler, who threw 3.2 innings in his first start last week.
Lamet is averaging 12 strikeouts per nine innings and his velocity is back to the upper-90s after his Tommy John Surgery in 2018. He’s scheduled to face Dodgers’ top-pitching prospect Dustin May on Tuesday.
Richards is the wild card of this trio. He’s been successful throughout his career when healthy. He hit the 90-pitch mark for the first time since April 2018 in his previous start. Ross Stripling is scheduled to start for the Dodgers against Richards on Wednesday.
The Dodgers finished 36 games ahead of the Padres in 2019 and won 13 of 19 matchups, then added 2018 AL MVP Mookie Betts in the offseason to bolster their roster.
The Padres made their fair share of moves to improve the team, including signing on-base machines Tommy Pham and Jurickson Profar and center fielder Trent Grisham, who is off to a great start at the plate.
This series will be a litmus test for the Padres. They don’t need to “beat-up” the Dodgers to make the expanded playoffs, but the Dodgers are the baseline for success in the NL West.
After a 6-2 start, the Padres dropped two straight to the Colorado Rockies. Starters Joey Lucchesi and Zach Davies allowed six earned runs in 6.2 innings.
The bullpen has been the biggest issue for the Padres so far, as they rank 25th in baseball with a 6.15 ERA.
To win this series, the Padres will need their offense to keep scoring at their league-leading 5.9 runs per game pace.
They’ll continue to be without first baseman Eric Hosmer, who was placed on the 10-day injured list on Saturday with gastritis, which is a gastrointestinal illness that kept him out of the lineup for six of the team’s first nine games.
The Dodgers won three of four games against the Arizona Diamondbacks over the weekend.
