Padres = Hot May

[Raji]

May days: Bettors run risk riding Padres' annual hot streak
Sun, May 6, 2007By Jason Logan

Unraveling the secret of the San Diego Padres’ success in May is something better left to Robert Stack and the crew of Unsolved Mysteries.

The Padres are 45-17 in the month of May since 2005, including a 4-1 record heading into Monday’s game to start the month this year. Last season, San Diego posted a 19-10 record during May and the year before that finished the month 22-6.

Many of the Padres players were asked about the trend but couldn’t come up with a solid explanation for the improved play. Last year’s squad had only four position players and four pitchers from the previous team and started May winning eight straight.

This year’s team has six position players and six pitchers left over from the 2006 squad and stories of the Padres’ success in May is now become something of club house folklore in San Diego.

“May the past two years has put us into the postseason,” shortstop Geoff Blum told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “May of 2005 was absolutely unbelievable. Halfway through last May, we sort of looked at each other and wondered, 'What ...'

“Honestly, I hope there's something to this, that it's contagious and becomes a staple of Padres baseball.”

What has become a staple of Padres baseball over the last three seasons is the team’s slow start in April. In 2005, San Diego started the year 11-13 and in 2006 it put up a record of 9-15 in April. This year the Padres were 13-13 in the first month of the season and have already started another successful May, winning three of their last four.

Professional handicappers are also left scratching their heads when asked about San Diego’s improved play in May, writing off this trend as sheer coincidence. They also believe any mental edge this gives the Padres for their remaining games in May could be short lived.

“Factors like this tend to disappear the minute that a game starts,” says David Malinsky of Covers Experts. “Yes, they might be a bit more confident when they take the field, but once the first pitch of each game is thrown, all of that goes away and it comes down to simply being baseball again.”

“If anything, a couple of losses might sting that confidence,” says Malinsky, “especially as some of the favorable bounces that they got in those past May runs could begin to go the other way.”

Over the past two seasons San Diego has topped either the pitching or hitting stats during May. In 2005, it led the National League in batting average (.289) for May and drove in almost six runs per game. Last year, the Padres’ pitching was the biggest reason for their success and posted an NL best 3.58 team ERA in May.

Home-field advantage hasn’t had much of a hand in this trend. During the 2005 run, San Diego played 16 of the 28 games in May on the road while last season it only played 16 of 29 at home. As of Sunday, the Padres were in the middle of an eight-game road trip and will play 11 of the remaining 23 games in May away from Petco Park.

“It will really be a case of how well this particular team performs,” Malinsky says of the Padres’ chances of a repeat performance this May. “Key contributors like Chris Young, David Wells, Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Bard and Marcus Giles had nothing to do with that past May success.”

This season San Diego is 17-14, hitting .243 and putting up between four and five runs per game. They currently rank seventh in the majors in ERA and have one of the best bullpens in baseball backing up the starting rotation.

“It will be a case of how well or how poorly this particular team plays the game and that is a big part of why we always view past trends with a grain of salt,” says Malinsky. “If those games were played by a different cast of performers, then they carry almost no correlation with them to the future.”

Oddsmakers have the Padres as +117 underdogs for Monday’s Game 1 of a four-game series with the Atlanta Braves. After this series, San Diego will go on to face the St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds, Seattle Mariners, Chicago Cubs, Milwaukee Brewers and Pittsburgh Pirates over the course of May.

Raji