| time: | 7:05 p.m. PT |
| tv: | 4SD |
| sp: | David Wells (3-5, 4.48) vs Sergio Mitre (2-3, 2.75) |
| pre: | Padres.com, SI.com |
Welcome to the midway point of the season. After Monday’s night’s contest against the Marlins, the Padres will have played exactly half of their regular-season schedule. They are assured of at least a share of first place in the National League West and will be on pace for no fewer than 92 wins.
After several less-than-stellar false starts with the Cubs and Marlins, right-hander Sergio Mitre is putting up solid numbers in Florida so far this season. He gets the start in the opener against David Wells.
The formula for Wells is always the same: let him throw about 75 pitches, hope he has a lead, and then get him the heck out of the game. On the bright side, Wells appears to be much more comfortable at home (.271/.309/.376) than on the road (.349/.396/.576) in ‘07. Here’s hoping that trend continues.
Go Padres!
109 Comments
Whew, glad that error didn’t hurt anyone.
Good start for Wells, it seems.
Mike Jacobs normally is completely helpless against left handed pitching. But this year he’s OPS-ing over 1.000 against them, albeit in only 28 at bats. Still weird.
Equally good start for Mitre, unfortunately.
Bush throws another scoreless inning today with 2 K’s
Miguel Olivo’s gameday picture looks like Cuba Gooding, Jr.
Khalil’s going the opposite way a bunch this year. It’s nice to see.
Bard single-handedly disproving the “Put it in play and good things can happen” theory.
7: Oh it’s been disproved many times before. The bean ball game against the Cubs and Zambrano did a good job disproving it.
8: Oh, I know it’s been disproved. But there are many who still have scales on their eyes.
At least the teams involved in tonight’s game have generally not taken it to heart. The Marlins and Padres are one-two in the league in strikeouts.
Without taking sides on that 3-1 pitch to Cabrera, does it seem like Boomer barks at the home plate umpire at least once a game?
11: Sometimes I think the umpires need a good barking to.
11: At least. I just assumed that all umpires hated him.
What happened to Hanley Ramirez?
13: He apparently pulled up lame coming into second. I thought when it hit Cox alley it would be good for a triple.
Glad to see Boomer work out of a brief mini jam.
#13: I’m surprised they listen to him at all.
14: That really sucks for the Marlins but it’s great news for us. Maybe Boomer can give up a shot to the alley to Miguel Cabrera next.
Why is Wells swinging at the first pitch? Or if that was a bunt, why is he offering at the first pitch?
Boomer is working hard, but effectively tonite.
Oh, Buddy, and I was so proud of you for not bunting in that same situation Saturday night.
19: Bud did the right thing. Marcus is struggling, make him a productive out. It worked too.
Anybody know Boomer’s pitch count?
The run expectancy is higher with a runner on second and no outs than with a runner on third and one out. Additionally, with someone like Wells on the mound, you’re likely to need more than one run to win, so it’s not as good to play for the one run.
As GY pointerd out the other day, he’s only good for about 57.
21: 83 pitches. Let’s get a couple of guys on base so we can pinch hit for Boomer.
#24: Thanks and ditto!
22: We need every run we can get, it seems like the right play to me. Sometimes you have to shake things up to get an offense going. Bunt for a hit, steal a base, try to manufacture the runs when your not hitting well.
Our pleas go unheeded by Black.
Um, why is Boomer still pitching?
25: I guess we’re not pinch hitting? Lets hope Buddy realizes this has to be Boomers last inning and to have someone warming.
How come Adrian doesnt wear the high socks ever anymore?
So put me on record that bunting so early in the game is dumb….glad to see a very small number of posts on this board….people are voting for Young and for Escobar. Those east coast and midwest pitchers play way too early for me to have ever heard of any of them.
My fingers are getting tired from voting for CY. But, I’m gonna keep plugging away.
Wow, what an AB by OG. Good to have him back.
Thanks Mitre. C’mon Cameron, make ‘em pay!
Wow, you dont throw home there…
Good AB there for Khalil to stay alive long enough for the sac fly.
Well, not the most exciting way to score runs, but we are scoring them and often times in those situations the Pads strike out and dont score those 2 runs. Good job boys.
Some terrible infield defense by Florida tonight. Glad to see we’ve been able to take advantage. I love watching OG run the bases.
Good job Buddy! For the first time he’s yanked at the first sign of trouble
I cannot believe Black is actually letting Wells stay out there to throw over 100 pitches. Since he hasn’t gotten lit up yet, my mood is incredulous but amused, instead of incredulous and furious. At least he didn’t leave him in to give up a homer to Cabrera.
What a great start by Wells tonight. Lets the bullpen rest after a pretty rough weekend in LA. I’ll still take his performance as our 5th starter this year and not complain at all.
Man, Cabrera is scary. 97 up in the zone and my heart was pounding on that 1-2 pitch…Yikes, that’s a scary fast bat.
At least Black isn’t as bad with the bunt as Bobby Cox. Cox had Brian McCann bunt with runners on first and second to set up the bottom of his lineup to drive them in. Shockingly, they didn’t, and the Braves remained tied with the Dodgers 1-1, through 5 and a half.
It’s too bad that we have nothing that would entice the Marlins to move Cabrera. He’s a guy that you’d be willing to trade almost–well, maybe we don’t need the almost– anything for
According to Gameday, pitch 4 was 100 mph. Anybody see it for real?
43: Pure foolishness to have someone like McCann bat there. It’s not like McCann couldn’t blow the game apart with one swing of the bat or anything.
Great performance by Wells tonite. Even though the boys weren’t killing the ball tonite, they got him some support.
LOL! I love that commercial: “Find the one thing in life that you don’t do well, and then don’t do that thing.” Words to live by.
45: Gameday is consistently 2-3 mph fast since it measures the speed of the pitch out of the hand. It had Wells hitting 90 early in the game.
Um, why was Cruz bunting with no one on and one out?
44: I’m not a big fan of Cabrera. I know he can hit, but he seems so lazy on defense. I’d like to get Brendan Harris here. If we could afford him, I’d love Aramis Ramierez too
#44
The Marlins want young pitching and, mainly, young outfielders. We got neither to deal…unless you’re talking Young or Peavy, which I certainly hope we aren’t. Our best young outfield prospect is probably Mcanulty, and he’s not enough to deal for much of anything useful right now.
Why only pitch Bell for 1 batter?
52: Because his spot came up last inning and Branyan pinch hit for him.
#52: Yeah, I haven’t been too impressed with Linebroke this season.
The last time Linebrink pitched he was awesome (in the huge sample size of three hitters).
53: Gotcha, I missed last 1/2 inning. Damn Linebrink…
#55: You were saying…
From Gameday it looks like Linebrink has no idea where each pitch is going. The pitches are pretty much scattered randomly throughout and outside of the strike zone.
Ooops…goof thing we got two fielder’s choices tonight
Linebrink looked good on saturday, he looks bad tonight his release point is way off
Seems Bell is only good for one out these days. Scotty is back in his familiar “eighth inning specialist” (to borrow the phrase from Krasovic) role again. What is it going to take for him to get “demoted?”
61: The front office realizing there is no such thing
Yikes. Merideth is warming up.
61: Bell’s situation was much more important than Linebrink’s. He had to get one of the best hitters in the league with a runner already on base. Linebrink got to start the inning with a three run lead. That’s not a particularly high leverage situation at all.
His offspeed stuff looks great tonight.
63: Yikes?
Can of corn and Scotty lucks out.
64. I agree with you completely on the relative leverage of the situations, but I don’t think that is playing into Pepe’s calculations right now.
#66: Gives me the heebie geebies to watch a side arm.
How did those last two changeups look?
Are we going to get another win with 3 or less hits? Thats rad
69: Ha ha why? Isnt the sidearm a more natural movement for the arm?
71: Who cares where our offense ranks as long as we win the games, eh?
I can’t believe how ineffective our offense can be (although tonite we did a lot of the little things right).
re 50: You’d want Harris or Aramis Ramirez but not Cabrera? If I put those 3 guys together I know which one is not like the others
68: Ah, true. But at least we can count on him continuing to make that decision correctly, even if he does get there the wrong way.
73: Yeah we took advantage of opportunites tonight, thats a very good thing
Brian’s been a machine over these last few days. If he can keep getting on base as a leadoff guy, our offense improves dramatically
It’s nice to have OG and his nine pitch walks back.
#72: It wasn’t for me when I pitched in HS. Side arm was harder to control and is almost impossible to throw a decent slider.
I think they did good rehabbing B. Giles like they did. He looks good.
OG has done a terrific job in the leadoff spot tonight, working pitches and putting pressure on the defense with very aggressive baserunning.
79: Ya, i just remember hearing it was better for your arm. I could be wrong. Cla seems to control it pretty well and throw a decent slider though.
Wow. Adrian is down to a .269 batting average. Mike Cameron is at .264. In the next day or two, Cameron could have a higher batting average than Adrian.
#80: He’s taking some really good swings on the ball. In fact, I think he looks better now than he did before he was on the DL. I also think he’s a little more amped up right now.
84: I agree. He looks good, and I like him in the leadoff spot because he walks and gives us a chance to manufacture a run. Hopefully he stays “amped up”
83: Hopefully the All-Star break is his cure, or we could be in some trouble down the stretch.
#82: Definately better for the arm. Just limits the types of pitches you can throw. I threw a lot of heat and junk and found that coming over the top I had more control with that. The thing that works for side-arms is that the batter gets weirded out from the angle.
Alright Kouz.
Man, you really don’t want to walk Linden here…
and he DIDN’T–nice pitch!
The command Trevor has from the stretch is impecable. It’s almost like he is throwing the ball with his eyes instead of his arm.
I love not having to see Cabrera here. Great job Trev.
Bada Bing, Bada Boom, Betty Boop!!!
Good overall game from the boys. They played well and took advantage of every opportunity.
Its amazing how effective Hoff still is. The guy is a machine and has mastered his craft. We are lucky to have him here, the Marlins dont even have a “closer” we have the greatest of all time. 506
STAY AWAY FROM LOU & MICKEY’S
I like how they say they built the ballpark next to it and then they pan 3 blocks away
#94
Ironically enough, Hoffman was once the property of the Marlins, acquired in the expansion draft (from the Reds, where he was a converted shortstop) and then traded to SD for gary sheffield and rich rodriguez (the Pads also got a couple other guys who never panned out, berumen and I can’t remember who else.) A fire-sale acquisition. Funny, huh? I believe that the first 2 or 3 of Hoffman’s saves are with the Marlins.
93: I tend to see this is as a bad game we just got lucky in. Wells stranded a lot of baserunners, and Linebrink was lucky the homer he gave up came before there was a runner on base. The offense was really bad, with too many groundouts while ahead in the count. The bright spots were Brian Giles and Wells striking out 6.
97: Yup and San Diego booed him at first, they had no idea what they were getting. Maybe another converted shortstop will take is place… (3.1 IP 8 K’s 0 ER)
98: Seeing Hoff is always a bright spot aswell
#98..
Any Wells start that we win is a good game. He’s such a crap shoot. He pitched well tonight and we got the win despite a poor offensive display against a pitcher who pitched really, really well (Mitre threw just 51 pitches thru 5 innings and was trailing.) I think good teams win without playing their best, and I think this is a darn good team.
Sorry to be such a homer…
100: Oh yeah, but that’s just taken for granted at this point.
I guess I didn’t really mean this was a lucky win, since the Marlins probably played worse, just that the team has to play better than this to return to the playoffs.
Also, don’t look now, but Wells’ ERA is down to 4.16.
102: I dunno about to return to the playoffs, but if we want to win in the playoffs we gotta hit to go along with this pitching. That low ERA will make Buddy pitch him into the 7th every start now…
74: Well he is the fattest one….
Man, it’s nice to see Giles succeed as a leadoff man. I know that it’s a super-small sample size, but this was sort of the plan out of spring training (I can’t remember why we messed with this plan…). If Giles can be a successful leadoff hitter (.400+ OBP) he’s actually going to end up being close to worth his contract this year and next. I was a little nervous that he’d be an albatross…
B(l)um: I was promised a[inch-hitting appearance tonight…(mumbling) burn down the stadium…
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070702&content_id=2062413&vkey=allstar2007&fext=.jsp
Young has the early lead in the voting and Zambrano has said that Young is the most deserving NL candidate. That’s because even Zambrano was scared to mix it up with D. Lee
106: LOL. Did we ever settle whether it was a fax machine or a printer?
Missed it, but I feel a bit like 102; but, take what lady luck gives us but don’t confuse it with playing well. At least from the description and box, not seeing that game.
Glad to have OG leading off. Not to be a nag, but I have been asking for that since the start of the season. The expectation of a power surge for an aging slugger that does not cheat is kind of just praying. OG’s plate discipline is beautiful, and I like him not over-swinging trying to compensate for the decline in power. Get on base, give us an occasional extra base hit, run the bases smart, and I am happy, even if that translates to a 270/370/365 line. That is an OPS of 735, not very good, but the OBP is really nice.
I hope his new focus on just being his new self gets his OBP back up, so maybe we can get a 280/410/365 line.