You can blame a lot of things for this latest sweep of the Padres. You can blame it on the offense of the Rays, or else the failure of the Padres to either pitch out of key spots or hit into opportunities presented to them. But the fact that the Padres led in all three games only to give up each one, points to failures in both clutch hitting and clutch pitching.

Sunday, the Tampa Bay Rays completed their sweep of the Padres 4-2, much in the same way they have done in the first two games. Padres got a lead, and they proceed to blow it, and they came up just short with the bats.

It’s a bad recipe, soup no one wants to eat, but perhaps it was a bad spoon stirring the mix. Pink bats, pink balls, pink everything, on account of Mother’s Day. Nothing against mothers but seriously, pink bats and stitches on the balls?

Whatever happened to calling mom on the phone or sending some flowers?

After loading the bases in the second inning, the Rays got a run home on a sacrifice fly. The Padres responded in the fourth inning thanks to a Yonder Alonso single, and went ahead in the fifth when Alexi Amarista, the little ninja hit a homer to center field.

And then the Padres allowed two runs home in the bottom of the sixth and an insurance run in the eighth courtesy of a James Loney homer. In all, the Padres had six hits against nine strikeouts.

The Padres got beat by Roberto Hernandez. A new guy. Well, maybe not so new. If you’ve followed baseball for a while you might remember a promising young pitcher named Fausto Carmona?

Same dude. Changed his name to get into the bigs, changed it back when he got caught. Bad soup, Padres, you got served some bad soup.

Eric Stults was okay for the Padres, he gave up three runs but the five walks were a little excessive. Padres bats were not patient enough, as Hernandez-Carmona didn’t exactly dazzle and his stuff was all over the place.

And those pink bats of the Padres were stirring that bad soup, around and around. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a whole lot of meat in the pot that stuck to their wooden implements of intended destruction.

Notes:

Monday, the Padres travel to Baltimore to try the Orioles out starting on Tuesday. In a weird scheduling anomaly, the Friars visit there for two games, and will later host the Orioles for two at Petco Park. No idea who is making out these schedules, but chances are that one could find a crackhead in Imperial Beach that could do better slotting these games with a ten-dollar bill and a quart of malt liquor in return. Presuming, of course, that he or she gets the opportunity to change his or her name. Right, Fausto? Or, you know, whoever you really are.