And Sometimes You Win the Ones You Should Lose

by Geoff Young on May 26, 2004

It’s human nature to remember the times things don’t go well. Ismael Valdez blowing a 7-1 lead last week at Pittsburgh immediately springs to mind. Last night, the tables were turned. With Valdez again pitching (and again having nothing), the Pads found themselves down 6-3 after four, against a starter who entered the contest with a 2.82 ERA.

No problem. The Padres proceeded to score eight runs against the Rockies while the bullpen did this:

IP H R ER BB SO
 6 4 0  0  1  5

Yeah, that’ll work.

Dennis Tankersley pitched two hitless innings. He did uncork a wild pitch that allowed Valdez’ final run to score, but what were the odds of a guy on third with nobody out at Coors field not scoring?

Nice job by Bruce Bochy of bringing Tank into a more reasonable situation last night than he did in Philly. Eighth inning, one-run game is the time to bring in your setup guys. Fourth inning, three-run game? Now you bring in the long man who has very little experience out of the bullpen. This is how you get a kid accustomed to a new role.

Then again, with the way Valdez is going, maybe the bullpen won’t be Tankersley’s role for long. Witness Valdez’ May numbers:

  IP  H BB SO HR  ERA  WHIP HR/9
25.0 38  9 12  7 8.64 1.880 2.52

Other than Valdez’ performance, there wasn’t a lot not to like in Tuesday night’s game. Brian Giles didn’t get a hit, but he’s been carrying the team of late, so he’s excused.

Kerry Robinson, a game after being caught stealing as a pinch-runner, made a laughably bad play in left field as Ryan Klesko’s defensive replacement. On a deep fly off the bat of Vinny Castilla, Robinson raced back to the wall and leapt up in a valiant effort to steal the home run.

Only problem is, the ball landed several feet to his left and actually hit more toward the base of the wall. It was a catchable ball. With his speed, Robinson should have been able to turn that into a fairly routine play. Granted, it would have been a double if Klesko had still been in there, but Klesko wouldn’t have had to work nearly as hard for it.

On the positive side, six Padres had two or more hits. Jay Payton led the charge with four knocks (including a laser shot just over the left field fence in the eighth) in his old stomping grounds. Sean Burroughs also collected three hits.

Rod Beck worked a scoreless seventh. Everyone talks about his velocity, but I wasn’t really paying attention to that last night. What I did notice is that Beck was spotting the ball exactly where he wanted to with just about every pitch. The sequence he worked to Charles Johnson was beautiful. There was absolutely nothing Johnson could have done with that final fastball at the knees that he took for strike three.

The Pads still aren’t firing on all cylinders, but they took one yesterday that maybe in years past they wouldn’t have. They are back over .500 on the road trip, and the bullpen is looking good. We knew coming into the season that the starting pitching would be the weak link. And although it’s been better than expected, how reasonable was it to expect a guy like Valdez to continue pitching so well? Or a guy like Wells to stay healthy?

Stuff happens. It’s the nature of baseball. It’s the nature of life. The question now is, where do the Padres go from here? In the most literal sense, they go back up against the Rox tonight. Adam Eaton vs Jason Jennings. Two talented but somewhat enigmatic right-handers.

Both the Padres and Rockies used five relievers in Tuesday’s game. Both bullpens threw over 70 pitches. Unlike last night, tonight’s contest will come down to whose starter is able to stay in the game longer. Because unlike last night, it’s going to be very difficult to get six innings out of the bullpen.

Other Stuff

From regular reader and contributor Howard Lynch (do I really need to preface his name with that description anymore?):

And some other junk that’s been piling up on the virtual desk:

  • Kiddofspeed Nothing to do with baseball. A Russian woman rides her motorcycle through Chernobyl and documents the experience in photos. Very sobering. One of the better things I’ve seen on the Web in a while.
  • The G Spot No, this is actually a guitar blog. I’ve been looking for some good ones, haven’t found too many. If you’re a guitarist and you blog (or you know someone who does), drop me a line.
  • Globe of Blogs Get your geek on…

As always, thanks for stopping by. We’ll talk again real soon. :-)

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