Padres (32-43) vs Tigers (34-39)
Cha Seung Baek vs Nate Robertson
7:05 p.m. PT
Channel 4SD
AM 1090, FM 105.7, XM 189
MLB, B-R
Padres at Petco Park since the start of the 2007 season:
W-L: 68-52
RS: 471
RA: 426
HR: 109
Opp HR: 75
Clearly the data show that the Padres need to move the fences in a bit. Oh, wait; no they don’t.
#14@Jonathan S.: Let the hype begin …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4weJOMO4M8
… power!
FJ with some good injury updates …
http://padres.mlblogs.com/archives/2008/06/injury_updates.html
Most interesting to me is this about CY …
Pitcher Chris Young will have surgery June 30 to repair some of the damage sustained when he was hit in the face by a line drive. Black said it’s possible Young could pitch again in late July or early August.
… yow, so he’s still well over a month away … ouch … for him *and* the team …
Chase has looked sharp tonight.
Who PH’s this inning … Clark?
#51@LynchMob:
!
Yeah someone posted that right after the draft and the cool thing I noticed is that at the beginning of the video he is swinging wood. He later switches to aluminum but I always wonder how high school kids will take to wood and it looks like Jaff might be ok
PMAC walks a lot and that is great but I kind of want more from a corner outfielder who really hasn’t showed much power yet and can be a bit shaky at times in the field and is slow a foot
It’s hard to win when Baek pitches. Black probably shouldn’t have let him start the sixth, but …
#55@KRS1: The FJ blog entry about the Jaff Decker signing indicates he stole 21 bases his senior year (and played CF) … for a big hitter like he looks to be, that’s some athleticism!
#57@Kevin: I’m with you … I’m OK with Bud pulling guys like Baek in inning early … even after only 71 pitches … but the bully isn’t quite the automatic it’s been in recent years … it’s a close/tough call …
#57@Kevin: When CY comes back, I would try to keep Baek around. The guy actually has pretty decent stuff and I would have pulled him after the lead off double in the 7th but Black showed some confidence in him at a heavy price.
If the ball doesn’t bounce off Gerut’s glove and over the wall for a homerun in the 4th and Hampson doesn’t deliver a ridiculous meatball to Thames then we are thinking more favorably about Baek.
#59@JP: Not sure who I would demote, but when Young comes back, there will be no weak spots in the rotation.
Greene looks like a different hitter this month, and it bears out in his June stats: .295/.353/.426
CY won’t be back for a whole month so a lot will transpire before Baek is pulled from this rotation. Baek has had two good starts and two bad ones so the book is still out on him.
It seems like the Padres are still very much in the hunt yet when you look at that bad record (32-44), you realize that for them to even break .500 they would have to play .580 ball and to win the 84 games that the DBacks are projected to win, they would have to play .600 ball. Is it not unrealistic to think that they are capable of this ? Somebody reassure me.
AP notes: Padres RF Brian Giles probably will be out until Tuesday with a sore right hamstring. … Kouzmanoff missed his fifth straight game with an irritated disc in his lower back. He said he’ll try to play on Tuesday when the Padres open a home series against the Minnesota Twins. He hit in the indoor batting cage before Saturday night’s game. He did report some progress: “Hey, look, I can bend over,” he said as he put his uniform on.
#62@JP: The Diamondbacks are on an 84-win pace. So nothing impressive there.
I guess the short answer to your question is: The Padres are 7.5 games back with 86 to play. That’s far from impossible. They don’t need a 2007 Rockies comeback to win the division. They need to make up a game about every two weeks.
Granted, they are behind four teams at the moment. So of course, the Padres have to out-perform each of those teams from now until the end of the season. But we sort of knew that anyway.
You’re right, they would have to play .604 ball to get to 84 wins. But then again, who says they will need 84 wins to win the division?
At coolstandings.com, they have the Padres at 3.8 percent to win the division. Not encouraging. But those odds change every day.
I don’t expect the Padres nor the rest of the division to do well in interleague play. A key for the Padres will be to do well in NL West play.
#64@Kevin: We need two 8-10 game win streaks and .500 baseball outside of those.
We are 20-20 in our last 40. Certainly not outstanding, but passable. Let’s hope the next 40 can bring us 24 wins. It will take one 1/4 of season red hot quadrant to really get us in the thick of things.
We are getting two guys back : Bard & CY – both of whom have the potential to be significant contributers.
It will a tough decision for the Pads around the trading deadline if they are 5 or 6 games under .500 but only 5 or 6 games out. Do you move someone like Randy Wolf when he is exactly the kind of guy you pick up down the stretch if you’re contending.