Folks with fancy degrees will tell you that kleptomania is a mental illness, but I bet those doctors never watched a San Diego Padres game. On a couple of occasions already this month, Kelsey has covered how the outfielders of the Robbin' Padres so spectacularly take away would-be dingers from their opponents, almost like they have a compulsion to steal. And yet their victims persist in hitting balls to that area just above the top of the fence. The latest of these poor marks was the New York Mets, who traveled all the way to Southern California only to discover that their hosts were thieves who like nothing more than swiping taters while thousands of locals cheer them on.
San Diego's big heist came in the fourth inning of Monday's series opener—thankfully, well after any impressionable children on the East Coast would have already gone to bed. Mark Vientos went the other way on some high cheese from Dylan Cease, smacking it way out to right center. But Fernando Tatis Jr. owns that territory, and if you want to do business, you gotta go through him. The SD star gathered, leaped high off the warning track, and stretched his glove over the top of the fence to reel back what had seemed like a sure-thing four-bagger. Tatis was such a stealthy, athletic robber in this instance that even Padres play-by-play man Don Orsillo had no idea what he did. First, he called it as a home run, and then when Tatis fumbled the ball on the transfer into his glove, Orsillo assumed Vientos had hit it off the wall. That's the sneakiness of all the best bandits: They stay two steps ahead of whatever you're thinking.
Vientos was so frustrated by this poaching that he actually ended up hitting a grand slam to nearly the same spot in the ballpark (just a little deeper), but Tatis and the Padres got the last laugh. For one, they walked it off with a 7-6 win, but also the right fielder explored a different genre of robbery when he took away a base knock in the sixth from Ronny Mauricio. Rather than leap at the wall, this time Tatis hustled toward the foul line on a softly hit looper and smoothly slid to make the catch. Nobody is safe from Tatis's piracy.
The win on Monday gave the Padres three in a row, and it puts them in decent shape as the season starts to get tense. Four games back of the unsteady Dodgers, they're still the clear underdogs in the division race, and last week they dropped four straight to the Marlins and the Cardinals, which exposed some holes in the lineup and the fact that their rotation could stand to get a little beefier. But look on the bright side: From a TV viewer's perspective, San Diego is the best atmosphere in baseball; they have some studs in Tatis and Manny Machado, plus have been getting ace-grade work from this evolved form of Nick Pivetta they signed in the offseason; and thanks to the expanded wild card, they're two games up on the Reds for the final playoff spot.
As the team still seeks its first-ever World Series title, I'm sure the Padres' fans would still like to see them make a deadline move or two, even though they're low on prospects. Lucky for them, I happened to see a perfect fit for this squad out in Baltimore on Monday. Look at the way Cedric Mullins chased down a longball in center, then jumped at the wall for a catch.
That's a Robbin' Padre if ever I saw one.
