| time: | 6:40 p.m. PT |
| tv: | 4SD |
| sp: | Chris Young (8-3, 2.00) vs Livan Hernandez (5-5, 4.54) |
| pre: | Padres.com, SI.com |
I can’t stand watching Livan Hernandez pitch, but I have tremendous admiration for the guy. He has successfully taken Muhammad Ali’s rope-a-dope strategy and applied it to baseball. The results may be “aesthetically challenged,” but in the end, Hernandez has assembled a nice little career.
Chris Young, meanwhile, gets to pitch in a real game again, which hopefully means no more cheap-ass home runs. Go Padres!
Still like our chances? Our bullpen has given up four runs on 8 hits in two innings…
100: That’s true, but this is disgusting. Our pitching is our strength. Wen it fails this massively, this team is screwed.
I know we scuffeld coming out of the All-Star Break last year, but this is unacceptable.
At least KK gets another AB …
Let’s go get Liney a W?
Valverde for the (blown) save! Let’s get this done
#101: Not as much as when I wrote that.
Pitchers have a limited amount of control over the outcome of at bats. It would be nice to see more strikeouts, but they haven’t killed themselves with walks or homers. Sometimes the balls just fall in, sometimes the opposing hitters do a good job hitting good pitches. Until the bullpen starts striking out every batter they face, games like this will happen.
They have limited control over batted balls in play….
Do your thing KK…
Bummer. Better luck tomorrow…
I cannot believe we have 7 runs over the past two games despite 5 home runs, 8 bb’s, and 10 k’s.
110: We’re trying to give away this division. I cannot f’ing believe how this turned out. CY leaves with a 3-run lead and we can’t win the game.
I’m completely speechless and destroyed. This team has not looked the same over the past month as they did in the beginning of the year.
SD bullpen since break:
7 IP 8 ER…
God I hope it’s just rust…
Admittedly, i don’t know a whole helluva lot. But pulling out a 2-hit witch for a pinch hitter with nobody on seemed odd. Then leaving Bell in that long was flat out baffling.
Ah well, get tomrrow’s another game. Get it, net a one-game loss in the series, and get the hell out!
I’ll be in section 114. Go Padres
#112, 113: Rough patches happen; hopefully this one won’t last very long. As I’ve said since spring training, the NL West is going to be a dogfight between Ari, LA, and SD right to the end.
Strap in and get comfy…
On the bright side, AZ needed help to win this one.
Consider this:
1) Tony Clark got the definition of a “cheap” HR… it may has well been into Petco Porck.
2)Adrian isn’t a moron and lets the ball go (or even throws home after the cut) and Tony Clark is out, the guy runs like, well… me.
3) Orlando Hudson gets jammed in the 8th and gets an “excuse me” double, Kooz is one step to his right and it’s a soft line-out.
4) Valverde gets two frickin’ gift strike calls against Kooz (can you say “fastball at the ankles”)
5) That was Bell’s worst outing of the year, odds are he doesn’t do that again.
85. is right, we AZ got all the breaks, we got none.
Continuing with my blame everything on bad luck analysis, the Padres have a .196 BABIP in this series. The D-Backs have a .375 BABIP. Tonight the Padres were 3-23 on balls in play. The D-Backs were 9-27.
I know I’m being very fatalist and reactionary right now, but we haven’t played well lately. Going back before the break, our last quality series was against the Dodgers in LA. Since then, it’s been pretty ugly.
118: Oh yeah, I would say it’s actually been even worse than that, since the Dodgers series had two close games that we won and blowout that we lost. I’d say the last good series we had was against Chicago when CY had the fight with Lee.
But I don’t really believe in momentum or anything like that since it’s not possible to predict when one streak is going to end and the next is going to start, so I think the year as a whole gives us a better idea of how the team is going to play from here on out than the last two weeks do. And based on that, the Padres are probably the best team in the National League. This loss sucks, but there are plenty more games to go, and hopefully we’ll be the recipient of some lucky wins in the future.
119: I just would like to see some of these one-run games start coming our way. This can’s possibly continue all year, right?
Even in this era of bullpen over-specialization, does CY have to come out after the 6th ? Why ? Is he ailing or had he thrown a lot of pitches ?
Since when does your all-star ace starting pitcher with a 2.00 ERA come out after the 6th inning ?
121, 122: That’s what I want to know. CY is cruising for 6 innings, and is at 96 pitches after 6 full. I know a three run lead with our bullpen is often safe, and I know that guys like Bell and Linebrink haven’t pitched in a week, but I would like to think that Young was good to start the 7th. Surely he could toss 14 more pitches or so. It seems that Pepe Negro was guilty of the exact opposite of what he does with Wells and Maddux. Instead of the slow hook, we got the quick atta’ boy hook tonight.
Now we are in serious danger of getting swept since we have to go up against noted Padres’ nemesis Brandon Webb. I certainly don’t have much confidence in Germano tomorrow since it really looks like the clock is approaching midnight with him.
That sucked. I am sorry, but Bell was pitching just fine. 95+ heater in good location normally gets lots of outs. They just put good swings on good pitches. Normally, pitchers win that, but tonight they were shots.
The lines for the two teams:
SD: 200/294/500/794
AZ: 323/323/452/774
We out hit the, slightly. But as Ben B. in points out in #117, this feels more like they are getting lucky not just in clustering their hits, but in getting their balls for hits when ours find gloves. AGon drilled two balls and got nothing for it, while Hudson hits a squirt and gets a double and scores the winning run.
Luck of the draw, I guess, but man I am starting to really hate the DBacks. They always seem to give us trouble.
Decent night by the ump, a few here and there, but the final AB to KK? The guy had a date he had to get to? WTF? KK still almost gave us a shot, but, predictably, it found a glove.
KK is sure looking solid. His AB vs. Cruz actually impressed me the most. It was a 2-2 pitch and Cruz throws a nasty slider. Looked like a strike, but seemed to break 2/3 of the way, but KK somehow held up. That really impressed me, and that, coupled with his power, makes me hopeful about us finally getting some production out of 3B.
OPS:
KK 720
JB 620
Looking good so far.
I think others have noted it, but KK’s last name is not Russian but “Macedonian”. So the Crushin’ Russian is out. So how about the Mashin’ Macedonian, or MM for short?
#125: I couldn’t agree more…
http://ducksnorts.com/blog/2007/02/friday-links-23-feb-07.html