CRAIG’S COMMENTS: Discussing the Padres’ 8-game losing streak, more time for returning Campusano, the rotation and Samad Taylor

Luis Campusano at Petco Park

The Padres go into Sunday’s series finale at Dodger Stadium having lost eight straight games, their longest losing streak since 2013. With his ballclub now two games below .500 and outside the wildcard picture at the moment, Padres’ manager Craig Stammen discussed the slide and his confidence in the Padres’ returning to winning:

“So many times come to mind from my own playing career with what I’ve see from other managers and managers I’ve had in the past is that there’s no quit,” Stammen began. “None of us want to be called a quitter and that’s part of showing up every day after you’ve had your teeth kicked in and be able to go about your work and know that the consistency of that work is eventually going to build into the consistency of a season.

“I really believed in that. My career was kind of that synopsis. I wasn’t really great all the time. But I was just kind of consistent. That allowed me to hang around, hang around and hang around and then be a part of some really good teams. That’s kind of how I look at it.

“The biggest thing about this whole thing is we have really good players and a really good roster that has proven to win a lot of baseball games. It’s not how they have forgotten how to win games. It just hasn’t worked out for us here in this little eight-game stretch. These guys know what they’re doing. They believe the current circumstances are not a prediction of our future. We hold the future in our hands and we can go and make it happen.

“The hard part of the job as a manager is how do you instill what you do believe to be the correct mindset and then make the entire organization, not just the players, believe that. We’re working on that constantly. One thing I can do personally is that I can’t change. I have to be the same guy every day whether we win the game or lose the game.

“Keep playing and eventually we’re not going to stink all the time. Baseball has this randomness to it. There is also this randomness of everything working out in your favor, too. You have to believe that not everyday is doomsday and there’s a bright day ahead and today is going to be that bright day.”

Stammen on Luis Campusano starting a second straight game Saturday in his return from the injured list:

“We probably can’t run Campy out there every day until the All-Star break,” said Stammen. “But he’s ready for back-to-back days. He won’t catch (Walker) Buehler Monday. (Rodolfo) Durán will catch Buehler and we’ll go from there.

“We like Campusano’s offense. When he went on the injured list (May 6 with a broken big toe), we lost his power potential and his ability to do damage at the bottom of the lineup. We’ve missed that. And we welcome that back. Hopefully, we can get him hot without him taking awhile to get hot. Hopefully, he can get hot quick and be a big part of us scoring some runs.”

Stammen on starting pitcher JP Sears: “I want to see him attack the strike zone. When he gets in trouble is when he’s nibbling a little bit and gives up a few too many walks. When we saw him really good, it was when he limited the walks, attacked the strike zone, trusted his stuff and was able to have a really good start against the Braves.”

Stammen on the rotation moving forward:

“It’s a little to-be-determined,” Stammen began. “It depends a little on how the bullpen shakes out over the next couple of days. We’ll go from there. Germán Márquez is definitely an option as are a number of guys.

“A bullpen game is probably not out of the question. It kind of depends on what we get from the starting pitching and how today goes and how Buehler does on Monday (against Arizona at Petco Park). There’s definitely an option, too, for a bullpen game, I think.

“With so many guys missing from the rotation, there’s that element. You could call Saturday a little bit of a bullpen game with (Griffin) Canning only going four innings. With the state of our pitching, we have to go the best way we can.”

Stammen on Samad Taylor getting Sunday off: “I was talking to him in the hallway. This is about matchups. You keep doing what you’re doing. We love how you are playing baseball. Keep bringing that element to our team that we don’t really have. Keep being the same guy. You’re going to get your team. We’re not going to rest you too much. He’s a vital part of our team. Hopefully there will be a chance tonight to come off the bench and impact the game. And we wanted to get more left-handed bats in there today.”