That had nothing to do with your so-called "Don't swing 'til you gotta" ethic and everything to do with that the batter was already dead meat because he had two strikes against him.
The Padres batter had two strikes against him. With two strikes, a batter could be struck out. A batter can't be struck out with less than two strikes. So with two strikes, the batter now has to protect the entire home plate. All of it. To protect against a strikeout. And the batter has to guard more than home plate. He has to guard against pitches slightly off of home plate because his ability to gauge balls and strikes in the tiny fraction of a second that he has to do that isn't infallible. So there's a margin of error when the batter is trying to determine whether or not the incoming pitch will be a ball or strike. The batter protects against his infallibilty by swinging at balls, pitches slightly off of the plate. And even if the batter was infallible, even if the batter had perfect command of the strike zone, the umpire might make a mistake and call a pitch slightly off of the plate as strike three. So the batter has to guard all of the plate and then some. With two strikes, the strike zone is now expanded.
This is a huge fucking problem because the baseball bat isn't nearly long enough to cover all of home plate, let alone slightly off of the plate as well. Oh, the bat is technically longer than home plate, but the sweet spot of the bat is relatively tiny. And the sweet spot of the bat is where the batter hopes to hit the pitch with. Contact with any other part of the bat that isn't on the sweet spot will result in crappy contact and a bad or weakly hit ball. Also, the batter is likely to crack his bat if he hits the ball on any part of the bat that isn't the sweet spot. The sweet spot can't even cover half of home plate, let alone all of it and on top of that, the edges off of the plate.
With less than two strikes, a batter can focus on sections of the strike zone that he knows he can reach comfortably with the sweet spot of the bat. With less than two strikes, he has the luxury of letting some strikes go for called strikes. Not all strikes are the same. Some strikes are less hittable than others.
That's why a batter doesn't wanna bat with two strikes. It's the worst position he could be in. With two strikes, a batter now has one foot in the grave With two strikes, the batter is dead meat. With two strikes, the at bat is practically over.
That's why a batter shouldn't decide ahead of time to take strike one, sight unseen, before the pitch is even thrown. Because with one strike against him, he's now one pitch away from the dreaded strike two, the absolute worst case scenario for a batter..
That last Padres batter, Cronenworth, was eaten up alive on strike two with a classic nasty 90+MPH Diaz slider that dropped about a foot at the last second. The batter had little choice because he had two strikes against him.
That's why you don't decide to take strike one sight unseen. You don't give away strikes.
