SAN DIEGO – Before Manny Machado chose San Diego, before Fernando Tatis Jr. earned his call-up, before CEO AJ Preller’s spending spawned a rotation full of aces, before the Padres were good and fun and wearing brown – Eric Hosmer drew on the dotted line.
In retrospect, that moment serves as a turning point for this once lost franchise. But on that afternoon of late February 2018, Hosmer could have really imagined it this one?
“Definitely not that extreme,” Hosmer said last week. “If you told me Manny would have been here a year after me, followed by [Blake] Fast and [Yu] Darvish – and of course I had heard a lot about Fernando, but I didn’t realize how good he was until I got here and got to see him daily.
“I definitely had an idea that this team was good, had a lot of talent. But this amount of talent in one team is quite special. You certainly did not expect this. “
Hosmer seems determined to make the most of it. Two games into the 2021 season, the Padres are 2-0, and he’s the one doing the heavy lifting. For the second consecutive game, Hosmer homered and collected three basehits when the Padres stopped the D-backs 4-2 in Petco Park on Friday-evening.
Hosmer launched a two-run homerun to the right in the third, then hit an insurance run with a two-out RBI single in the seventh. He has made four trips to the plate this season with runners in scoring position, and has all four hits.
“It starts with: Eric wants to be up there at those times,” said Padres manager Jayce Tingler. “He’s doing his best to be aggressive in the fields he can get a hold of.”
Hosmer’s 13 total bases in the first two games of the season are the most in franchise history. He is also the first Padres player to start a season by recording three hits in each of the team’s first two games.
So while Machado and Tatis started the season on the chilly side – they combined to go 1-for-15, and Tatis made three mistakes – the Padres made up for it with more than enough production from Hosmer, their original signature. nine digits.
After a nerve-racking opening day victory – in which Tingler admitted he stayed with Darvish too long and then used all four of his primary bullpen weapons – San Diego played Friday’s game as if it knew there were 160 left. The National League West will not be won on the opening weekend. So, Blake Snell got an early hook after 4 2/3 innings in his Padres debut, and Tingler rearranged his bullpen to give some of his key arms an early rest.
Of course, Snell also got an infamous early hook in his final start – pitching Game 6 of the World Series for the Rays against the Dodgers. He was cruising on Friday-evening after hitting eight in 4 2/3 scoreless innings. But the circumstances – as Snell was quick to point out – were different. The Padres had him on a pitch limit of 85 for the first start, and he had already exceeded that number by one.
“I’m not here to throw nine innings in the first game I throw,” said Snell. ‘I do not mind. Nobody remembers your first few months of a season. They remember how you finish and what you do in the late season. … We’re going to build this up the right way, and we’re going to start getting some innings and some depth. Then we can have some fun. “
After Snell’s removal, the D-backs got two runs back in the seventh when Ketel Marte homered off righthanded Craig Stammen. But Hosmer replied with his two-out RBI knock in the bottom of the frame.
“He loves those opportunities and thrives on them,” said Tingler. “He’s been as successful as anyone else in those situations.”
After his big opening day appearance, Hosmer set the bar high for the Padres’ attack, saying he felt it should be the best in MLB in 2021. When he got to San Diego, it was arguably the worst. What a difference a few years make.
But Hosmer has never been one for performance on paper. The Padres have certainly built up an excellent selection. In Hosmer’s eyes, that says nothing.
“We have a special group here,” said Hosmer. “We have a lot of talent. Now is the time to put that talent to work. “
Hosmer walks the walk through two games.