The strikeouts have piled up this season at a record clip for the Padres, a battalion of free-swingers who still have made enough solid contact to push the needle into uncharted territory for single-season home runs.
That’s baseball today, though — an all-or-nothing, risk-reward offensive landscape where slapping the ball the other way, small ball and situational hitting routinely feel as rare as affordable stadium concessions.
Yet there were the too-often undisciplined Padres bats on Sunday, finding four different ways to scoot around the bases four batters in — double, RBI single, two-run homer, walk — during a 3-1, damage-early, grind-late win over the salty Red Sox at Petco Park.