This defines everything for the Padres...

This will decide everything for the San Diego Padres, the Yankees are in town. We got a series coming up with everything on the line. It is make or break. We got to have some heroes rather than zeros. What's going on, everybody? Christian Pedersen back with another episode of Padres Digest, the show that is feeling a lot better after not only getting yesterday's video off of my chest, but seeing that misery enjoys company, and that there are many of you out there who, despite feeling the exact same way, are never going to quit that Padres narcotic. If you want to join our group of relentless rebels, you can like, subscribe, comment, share, follow, all those other YouTubey buttons. Andrew and I bring you guys daily content. Before we go any further, I just want to ask, drop a comment below. When do you think I became a Padres fan? There was some of you in the comment section that seemed to think I'm some Johnny come lately that's only been here since Slam Diego. And while I sort of thought I've given some little bread crumbs as to when I became a fan, I just... Genuine question. Let's have that discourse of who you think my OG Padres are and where my standards are set. Okay, Padres, they have an upcoming series against the Yankees, and it is, it feels doom and gloom, like where we were just like, oh my god, we needed to gain some ground by beating the Reds into oblivion. We are a half game back. So it is not over. There is still hope that springs eternal for me that the Padres can get it done. The upcoming series against the Yankees is going to, I think, be make or break though, because the Yankees are a decently good team. And I want to discount what happened against the Reds as being like, you play up to good teams, you play down to bad teams. Casey Mize was involved. I hate that guy's guts now after how bad of a player he has become. We do have to acknowledge the offense is struggling. All of that culminating in like, let's just be like, with the pitching that we have coming up, and we'll go match up by match up of this. This could be the template for like, these are the good pitchers that we would throw in a big series against good teams. We are at home. If we can win two out of three here, I think that we're off of life support. And like, there's a framework to believe in these Padres. If we cannot win this series, let's book our tickets to Cancun. Let's start working on our golf swing, or say that we'll all meet each other at Saquon for a nice round with Joe Musgrove and hit the tables with the homeboy from the Diamondbacks. Quick, just housekeeping side note. I thought this was interesting. Apparently the Padres did put in a waiver claim for Luis Roberts, and we just lost out because the Orioles are higher up in there. So the Padres are still trying to work on fixing and figuring out the offense. And who can give us that spark? Ethan Salas, obviously not. I don't want to say not providing the spark. He's a total failure, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But like he showed up and has warning track power, and there's a lot of good there, but they are still trying to figure out with some of this injury bug, like what's going to be the vibe. Okay, let's start breaking down this series of Padres baseball against the Yankees. First matchup is going to be Max Fried, Walker Buehler. This one is fun to me because we get to see more of like, hey, former Padre, AJ probably got rid of this guy. How good is he now, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But on the Padre side, this is where I'm saying like this to me defines everything because we have our prime guys going. Walker Buehler is the first of the three matchups. Then following that up, we have, it's going to be Robbie Ray taking on Carlos Rondon. And I'm less about knowing Rondon and Fried, and I'm not trying to necessarily be like, oh, we have a great this, that, or the other against one specific pitcher and get way too into the weeds on that. But we have Ray going, we have Buehler going, and then we are closing it out with Michael King. So Buehler, Ray, King. Maybe I would say in a hypothetical, real actual playoff series, like if we were in it right now, I would probably just reverse that and go King, Ray, Buehler. But nonetheless, it to me does the same effect of like, we've got our core guys. This is the main group that I, I would not put Randy Vasquez above anybody here if you say that Casey Mize is above anybody here, you're just a troll. And belief out of here with that, you can go follow Dodger's Digest. But between those three guys going at it, and having a day off today to help the bullpen rest and recover, and being back in San Diego in front of the hometown crowd, that to me feels like there is no shortage of expectations. All of the tallies are in the favor of we can get this done. My favorite thing to ask is find me the flaw in that logic. Find me the counter argument to any of that when I'm looking through the list of all these things. Like everything should be in favor of saying Padres can and will be able to get this done with the firepower that they have. The other thing that kind of interests me in all of this between the different matchups while it is TVD on that third game, the first two guys for the Yankees between Max Fried and Carlos Rondon. I don't know if I'm saying that correctly or not. No respect for these guys. But between those two guys, it's a lefty pitch. And while there is a slot or two within our lineup where we have needed to try and find some help against lefties we needed a lefty bat as the DH slot, et cetera, et cetera. All the splits break down that our right-handed core of the lineup between Machado, Tatis, Bogarts all hit lefties at least slightly better than they do righties. So that's where I just keep coming back to if we can get this series win. Let's just say two out of three. I said it a couple of episodes ago when I was previewing what we had left throughout the entirety of the month of September. As long as we can keep winning two out of three, two out of three, two out of three we just can ship away at this or at the very least stay in the race that we are looking at here. Two out of three gets us, I think. I think two out of three we stay at least a half game back. Can do the leapfroggy back and forth thing with the Diamond. Where we're lining up right now, I just don't see how we don't... Like if we can get this win, I don't see how we can doubt this. If we get this lose or if we take this L and we lose this series, I don't see how we can have any confidence in this team. That's where I'm at right now looking ahead to this series. I don't even want to single out... I know we talked about the pitching rotation. I don't want to single out an offensive player and be like, oh, it's all eyes on this guy. Because it's all eyes on everybody. We need to see with less than a month left in the season and the game on the line and the season on the line and maybe kind of low-key the blueprint on the line given that new ownership's here and if we aren't even a wildcard team with hundreds of millions of dollars spent, what reason and nostalgia and connection to any of these new owners have to like hold on to these guys. If we can't get this series win, I'm not going to say that they're going to just start firing people and hit the dynamite button, but it just feels like we are at a fork in the road. We've got a day off to recharge, reset, and get things done and I have the expectations at a full 10 out of 10 for the San Diego Potters. Let me know what you think. Drop a comment, like, subscribe, follow, share, all those other YouTubey buttons. Until next time, we'll talk to you guys soon.