Padres (2-1) vs Astros (1-2)
Randy Wolf vs Shawn Chacon
12:35 p.m. PT
Channel 4SD
AM 1090, FM 105.7, XM 186
MLB, B-R
If Adrian Gonzalez catches Hunter Pence’s line drive, the game is over before Lance Berkman ever steps to the plate. If Jose Cruz Jr. doesn’t draw a two-out walk, Pence never bats. If Jose Cruz Sr. doesn’t have a kid, Cruz Jr. never bats.
On the bright side, at least now people can jump back on the “Trevor Hoffman is done” bandwagon. I was almost starting to miss them.
. . .
Randy Wolf makes his Padres debut in an afternoon affair. Assuming the rain holds off, I’ll be at this one as well as the Storm opener tonight.
98: Only if P-Mac makes an even stronger case to continue to start after Edmonds comes back (and maybe not even then).
99: Back to back nights and then a day game? I doubt Hoffman closes it.
RE: 99 nm/m I have my answer.
99: I’d guess it depends on how Trevor is feeling. If he’s ready to go, I’d have to believe Bud goes to him.
How about a bottom of the 8th rally, get Hairston a chance at the cycle… and make it a non-save situation.
With no one warming up behind Bell, does Bell go two innings today?
Hoffman won’t pitch. Bell 50/50, my guess.
Sweet defense on the 3rd out – pitchers’ fielding practice pays off!
Hell’s Bells.
TREVOR TIME!
Ok…. start holding your breath now…
It’s Trevor Time
(gulp)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Kjh9lQXLWk
Hoffman’s pitching? Wow. This will be interesting.
This looks like it has more to do with getting Trevor right back out there after last night.
1 down…
Ground out to Greene.
Death.
Ground out to A-Gon.
Taxes.
Same three batters as last night, just a different order. Same result for the first two.
Weak ground out to first, you can thank the best changeup in baseball for that.
(exhale)
Ground out to Kouzmanoff.
Hoffman.
Elite Closer: someone who can slam the door in the 9th. Gets back on the mound after blowing a game and has a short memory. See…Trevor Hoffman.
whew! great win today!
Padres on pace for 121 wins.
That was fine. Didn’t have nearly the juice on his fastball (looked like he maxed out at 84) but his control was much better. None of the pitches were near the heart of the plate.
I think his last pitch was a slider or a cutter unless he threw an 80 mph fastball.
Outstanding. I’ll take 3 out of 4 games every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Great game.
Oh man, good game. Nice work guys. Great way to open the year.
Hoffman: 2-for-3 in save chances, lowers ERA to 13.50 from 30.86.
Career: 526 saves in 590 chances (.892 percentage).
First place baby!
What’s our magic number?
Of course, a quality start by Randy Wolf is always great.
124: I dont know if I am reading this right but MLB gameday says his fastball was 89
130: I think 84-85 was his high today. I could be wrong.
I just checked his fastball velocities from yesterday and today. His fastball was pretty much the same (between 88 and 90) to everyone but Berkman where it was between 84-85 (and the pitch that was hit for the HR was right down the middle). Today all 4 his fastballs were 89 (one at 88 to Wigginton), while he threw 3 sliders (none yesterday) and just the one change to Cruz where he grounded out to first.
So it seems like the real fluke was the AB by Berkman where he had nothing on his fastball and couldn’t control it.
All that mph data was from the MLB.com Gamecast and is measured from when the ball is released from his hand so it will be higher then Channel 4′s radar readings.
Bard and scouts say Trevor is throwing harder. Considering the surgery, I’ll go with MLB.com Gameday and not the channel that employs Steve Quis to sub as an announcer.
Nice! Hoffman is clearly done and we should start the search for a new closer ASAP!
Living in England, I like home Thursdays as it’s a chance to follow the game before a reasonable bedtime; but after this morning’s grim news (a Padres defeat laid at Trevor’s door is always that much tougher to take), I was happy to get taken out to the cinema (the wonderful Lars and the Real Girl), and even happier when I got back to find that they’d won, and no. 526 had already been clocked up. (The first half of the season, with all those low-scoring home games, could be pretty hard work for Trevor, and for the rest of us, come to that.)
But there was an additional pleasure when I turned to the mlb stats page to see how many home runs they’d scored so far; and there at the top of the team batting list after 4 games is the so inferior offense of the San Diego Padres, with an average of .336. Small sample, weak opponents, but at Petco, and still a very funny sight:
http://mlb.mlb.com/stats/sortable_team_stats.jsp