At the beginning of the year, if I had gone out and said my bold prediction was that the San Diego Padres wouldn’t 
make the playoffs, you would have thought it was a bad joke.
If you go back to August 25th when the Padres had a comfortable 6.5 game lead on the NL West and the best record in the National League with just 37 games to play, most people would have said I was crazy to think the Padres would not be playing in the post season.
Since that date, however, the Padres have dropped nine consecutive games and now lead their division by a slim two game margin and luckily for them the Giants have been struggling going just 4-5 over that same span.
Once seen as a lock to make their first post-season appearance since 2006, the Padres now have no momentum heading into the most important part of the baseball season.
While it’s on a longer timetable, the Padres risk a collapse as devastating as those suffered by the Mets in recent years. The doubts that arose when the Padres first started winning are now beginning to resurface.
All year people questioned the Padres offense, but the team kept winning. Now the issue is rearing its ugly head, as the team has scored just 2.3 runs a game during the streak. Even the Padres vaunted pitching staff seems to be coming down to earth. While allowing 5.7 runs a game, the Padres staff no longer seems unhittable.
While there is still plenty of time to turn things around, the Padres need to get back on track soon if they want to make it to October. With the Phillies recent hot streak, the Padres can’t depend on the option of falling back onto the Wild Card.
I think the Padres still are the favorites to take the division. After all, if they still have a lead after a large losing streak they must have been doing a lot right earlier in the year but the streak must end soon.
Used with permission of the author.
Along with contributing to Sports Climax, Brett Kettyle is the Atlanta Braves Community Leader on Bleacher Report and maintains a Braves column for MTR Media. Follow Brett on Twitter.
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