ANAHEIM — The Padres don’t want to be reckless on the bases. But they certainly want to be aggressive. Sometimes that’s a fine line to walk.
In their 2-1 loss to the Angels on Monday night at Angel Stadium, the Padres again got all they could have asked for from knuckleballer Matt Waldron. They got Manny Machado’s first home run in 99 at-bats, snapping the longest drought of his career.
But at two crucial junctures, they ran into key outs on the basepaths — outs that blurred the line between reckless and aggressive. In the second inning, Ha-Seong Kim was thrown out at third base trying to stretch a double. In the fifth, Jurickson Profar was nailed at the plate, trying to score on Fernando Tatis Jr.’s double.
As ever, manager Mike Shildt came to the defense of his team in the aftermath.
“We don’t want to just run to run,” Shildt said. “We’ve run intelligently, aggressively. We want to be smart with our aggression. … I am confident that our aggression pays off for this team. It’s a mindset. We do a lot of really good things. When it doesn’t work, it can sting. But, man, we’ve got to appreciate when it does.”
A day ago, the Padres were on the verge of moving four games over .500 for the first time, one out away in Kansas City from their first sweep of the season. They dropped that game in the ninth, then lost a game Monday in which they squandered chances galore against a last-place team.
There were other factors that contributed to the loss. The Padres went hitless with men in scoring position. They failed to execute where their opponent thrived. Twice, the Angels used small ball to score, including the go-ahead run on Luis Guillorme’s sacrifice fly in the eighth.
Still, on a night of thin margins, the game swung away from the Padres on the basepaths. And while they didn’t love the results, they seemed to be OK with the process.
