The Padres offensive woes continued Wednesday night as they failed once again to score a run. They recorded five hits in the game, all singles, as the Dodgers beat them 7-0. The latest debacle came against a 28-year-old Japanese pitcher, Kenta Maeda, making his major league debut. Maeda, just to rub it in, homered in the game as well.

If a team gets shutout in a Clayton Kershaw start, that’s just part of the risk of facing one of the all-time greats on the mound. If the same team also gets shutout in a Scott Kazmir start, it’s a tough break. Kazmir is good, but a team should be able to score a run or two against him. When that team gets to the third starter in the rotation, one who pitched in a different level of major league, the team should be able to outscore the pitcher!

The Dodgers and the Padres hitters now stand at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of offensive batting average on balls in play (BABIP). I’m using (Hits-HR)/(AB-(HR+k)). The Dodgers are the best in the majors at .400. The Padres batters are lowest in the NL at .172. Couple that with 28 strikeouts (1/3 of their outs), and there just isn’t much chance to generate offense.

Note that the Dodgers batters struck out 29 times already. Los Angeles is pounding the ball, however, with 15 extra base hits to the Padres one. Strikeouts are fine as long as they are coupled to power. Strikeouts without power are a recipe for disaster.

So even in the small sample size of three games, we learned something about the Padres and the Dodgers. The Padres appear to be a weak hitting team. Not only do they swing and miss, but they don’t hit the ball hard when they put it in play. The Dodgers strikeouts come from their power. They swing hard. They do miss balls, but the results when they connect are devastating. We’ll see if their seasons continue to play out this way.

(Note that if you substitute the Angels and Cubs into this analysis, you’ll get a similar result. Even though the Angels own a lower BABIP than the Padres, .146, they only struck out 13 times, so simply by putting the ball in play more, they’ll generate a bit more offense. They have scored one run.)