General comments on last night’s Padres-Diamondbacks game

• Rickey drew three walks last night, to extend his big-league record to 2111. That’s 35.98 miles to geeks like me. There’s a lot he used to be able to do that he can’t anymore, at age 42, but the guy has a .363 OBP. Amazing.
• I’m destined to be frustrated by Padre second basemen. Or probably I never got over losing Robbie Alomar. Damian Jackson is basically Quilvio Veras with better range. A little guy who swings for the fences. He’s fun to watch on defense, though.
• For a guy hitting .238/.344/.333 against lefties, Ryan Klesko sure has a lot of good at-bats against them. He still pulls off the ball too much, but last night he absolutely hammered a Nick Bierbrodt offering to dead center. Steve Finley made a nice running catch at the 413-foot sign against the wall.
• If there’s a more underrated right-handed hitter in the game than Phil Nevin, I’d like to meet him. A third baseman who hits .316/.406/.622? And he’s only 30 years old. I’ve often compared Nevin to Ken Caminiti, but I take that back. Cammy didn’t blossom till he was 32, and he only had one year, 1996, when he put up numbers like what Nevin’s doing now.
• D’Angelo Jimenez is struggling at the plate right now but he’s still having good at-bats. He’s also shown dramatic improvement in the field, although I still get a little nervous when he has time to think about his throws. He’ll occasionally short-arm one over to first. There are people around here who believe the Padres shouldn’t have given up Jay Witasick for him. Those people are wrong.
• Tony Gwynn received a standing ovation when he pinch-hit for Rudy Seanez in the eighth. Given the recent animosity between the two clubs, this surprised me a bit. But it was nice to see. Kudos to the D’Backs fans. They deserve a classier ballclub.
• Woody Williams is an incredible competitor. He was fooling nobody last night, and yet he managed to hold Arizona to one run in five innings. I guess a potential suitor could look at that one of two ways: (a) His stuff isn’t that great or (b) despite his poor stuff, he still managed to get hitters out. Woody is seriously miscast as a #1 starter but he could help a team in need of a workhorse at the back end of a rotation.
• The bullpen was outstanding. Chuck McElroy, signed yesterday to take the place of Brian Tollberg, who was shipped back to Portland because the Padres won’t need a fifth starter till early August, did a credible job. Seanez worked out of a jam in the seventh, striking out David Dellucci on a nasty sinker and inducing Matt Williams to hit a weak grounder to second after an Alex Arias error cut the Padres lead to 3-2. Jose Nunez, in his uniquely terrifying way, pitched a scoreless eighth before turning things over to Trevor Hoffman, who sealed the deal with strikeouts of Erubiel Durazo and Craig Counsell. Trevor has been struggling this year, particularly with his normally impeccable command, but he made Durazo and Counsell look absolutely foolish.
• There were no “incidents” of any kind. That’s pretty newsworthy when these two teams meet. I’ll be surprised if nothing happens tonight, though, when Randy Johnson and Kevin Jarvis go head-to-head. Last time they faced each other, Johnson planted a fastball on Jarvis’ pitching elbow, then was lifted for a pinch-hitter next time he was due to bat. Hey Randy, here’s a tip: Don’t stand too close to the plate. Like, maybe clear out of the batter’s box or, even better, behind the umpire. I’m not saying anything will happen but that ball sure can get slippery in the dry Arizona heat.

General comments on other stuff

The other thing I wanted to mention today was how scary good the Oakland rotation is becoming. A while back, ESPN.com ran a poll asking users which three starters they’d most like to have. There were five or six choices, including the trio of Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and Barry Zito. I voted for them, and of course they finished last, having the misfortune of not playing for the Yankees.

But check this out:

I’ve been slow to jump on the Hudson bandwagon but he’s making it very difficult for me to maintain my position. I was at his big-league debut, and while he struck out 10 Padres that night, I attributed it to the fact that he was facing a pretty bad lineup and nobody knew who he was. I’ve been waiting for hitters to stop biting on that splitter and it just hasn’t happened. Hudson has become a much better pitcher than I’d expected. There are no chinks in his armor. He prevents hits, keeps the ball in the park, has great command, and sports a ridiculous groundball/flyball ratio. He’s a young, healthy Kevin Brown. Throw out April, during which he allowed half of his 12 homers, and his ERA is an even 2.00.

As for Mulder and Zito, who wouldn’t want two 23-year-old southpaws with those numbers in their rotation? Mulder, coming off a terrible season, has displayed excellent control and, except for June, good hit prevention. In fact, throw out June, and Mulder’s ERA drops to 2.89. Zito, who played (along with RHP Mark Prior) high school ball across the street from where I went to college, gained a lot of attention for his success late last season and in the playoffs. While his numbers have fallen off from last year, he’s pitched very well of late and still has outstanding peripherals. He doesn’t have quite the upside of Hudson or Mulder but who cares?

Bottom line is, these guys are already pretty darned good and they’re only going to get better…