SAN DIEGO – Before Manny Machado chooses San Diego, before Fernando Tatis Jr. wins his call, before general manager AJ Preller spends a full rotation of aces, before his parents are good and funny and wear brown – Eric Hosmer signed on the dotted line.
In retrospect, that moment serves as a turning point for this once-abandoned franchise. But on that afternoon in late February 2018, Hosmer could have really imagined this?
“Certainly not to this extreme,” Hosmer said last week. “If you would tell me that Manny would have been here a year after me, then followed by [Blake] Snell and [Yu] Darvish – and I had heard a lot about Fernando, obviously, but I didn’t realize how good he really was until I got here and I could see him every day.
“I definitely had an idea that this team is good, with a lot of talent. But this amount of talent from a single team is quite special. You certainly didn’t expect that. “
Hosmer certainly seems determined to make the most of it. Two games in the 2021 season, Padres are 2-0 and he is the one who makes great weights. For the second game in a row, Hosmer made a home run and had three shots, while the Padres stopped behind D, 4-2, at Petco Park on Friday night.
Hosmer launched a two-run run to the right field in the third, then launched an insurance race with a single RBI with two exits in the seventh. He has made four moves on the field this season, with runners in the scoring position and has shots in all four.
“Start with: Eric wants to be up there in those moments,” said Padres manager Jayce Tingler. “He does a good job of being aggressive on the ground where he can reach the barrel.”
Hosmer’s 13 total bases in the first two games of the team’s season are the most in the franchise’s history. He is also the first Padres player to start a season with three hits in each of the team’s first two games.
So while Machado and Tatis started the season on the cold side – they combined to go 1 to 15, and Tatis made three mistakes – the parents made up for it with more than enough production from Hosmer, signing their original in nine digits.
After a nervous start to the day – in which Tingler admitted he stayed too long with Darvish and then used all four main bullpen weapons – San Diego played the game on Friday as if he knew he had 160 left. West will not be won in the opening weekend. So Blake Snell got an early hook after 4 2/3 innings in his Padres debut, and Tingler reshaped his bullpen to give some of his key arms an early rest.
Of course, Snell got an early hook in its last start – launching Game 6 of the World Series for Dodgers. He had come on a cruise in the evening, after hitting eight over 4 innings without a 2/3 score. But the circumstances – as Snell quickly pointed out – were different. Padres had it at an early launch limit of 85 and had already surpassed the number one by one.
“I’m not here to throw nine innings in the first game we released,” Snell said. “It does not matter to me. Nobody remembers the first few months of a season. They remember how you finish and what you do in the post-season. … We will build this in the right way and we will start to get some halves and some depth. Then we can have fun. ”
After Snell’s removal, the D-backs received two innings in the seventh, when Ketel Mars eliminated Craig Stammen with his right. But Hosmer responded with his RBI shot in the bottom of the frame.
“He loves those opportunities and thrives on them,” Tingler said. “He was as successful as anyone in these situations.”
After his big opening day action, Hosmer put his master in charge of his parents’ offense, saying he thought he should be the best in MLB in 2021. When he got to San Diego, he was probably the worst. What a difference a few years make.
But Hosmer was never one for “paper” achievements. Of course, the parents built an excellent list. In Hosmer’s eyes, that means nothing.
“We have a special group here,” Hosmer said. “We have a lot of talent. Now is the time to develop that talent. ”
Through two games, Hosmer walks.