I watched in horror as the Padres blew Snell’s gem with horrendous defensive play at critical moments, ugly relief pitching and an inexplicably dumb bunt foul popout by Jake Cronenworth when even just standing in the batter’s box with no outs and taking three fastballs down the middle would have been better.

Manager Bob Melvin removed him after five because pulling Blake Snell after 82 pitches when he’s rolling is every manager’s favorite thing to do. Blake Snell continued his career renaissance yesterday by firing five shutout innings, extending his current streak to 21 consecutive scoreless innings. Reader, the vibes lasted less than 24 hours. It looked like, finally, the team that began the season with a franchise-record $246 million dollar payroll, World Series hopes, and a swagger bordering on a little bit silly, given they’ve never won anything- but also kinda thrilling, given that baseball can be so boring-was finally, FINALLY off the schneid. Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr., Juan Soto and Gary Sanchez all homered. Yu Darvish pitched six strong innings in Philadelphia, giving up one run and striking out nine. On Friday night, it looked like the Padres’ season was about to turn around. Surely, though, their excellent run differential just meant they were victims of bad luck, right? That all the bloop hits that other teams used to beat them would begin to hang long enough in the air to be turned into outs, and that all the rockets off San Diego bats that died in opponents’ gloves would start finding their way to grass, and then walls, as their players circled the bases. The Padres? Ninth, in a world where six teams in each league make the playoffs. Well, the Braves and Dodgers are one-two in terms of NL records. And if you had told me back in March that the three NL teams with the best record at the All-Star break would have been Atlanta, Los Angeles and San Diego, I would have said, ‘Well, yes. But they had outscored opponents by 44 runs so far this season, which was third-best in the National League behind the Dodgers and Braves. 500, and seven games out of the last NL wild-card slot.

I woke up on Saturday morning with the intention of writing a newsletter about how the Padres were back.

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