The Padres finally beat the Dodgers on Wednesday night. Where did those 10 runs come from, anyway? That’s as many as the Padres had scored over their previous four games combined.

To the bullet points:

• Jon Garland is amazing. How do you use 117 pitches in 5 innings and make a regulation game last 3 hours, 48 minutes?
• Will Venable had a nice evening. He finished a home run shy of the cycle but went 4-for-5 with a triple, two doubles, and a stolen base. That was Venable’s debut in the leadoff spot this year. Something tells me that, lack of overwhelming on-base skills be damned, we’ll see him there again before long.
• Adrian Gonzalez went 3-for-5 with a homer and 6 RBI. He’d had 5 RBI over the previous 21 games (88 PA) going back to April 26. It’d be good to have him back at the party.
• Chase Headley knocked his third home run. He now needs one more extra-base hit to catch David Eckstein in that department. Eckstein has 22 fewer plate appearances, in case you’re wondering.
• Speaking of which, check out the OPS+ among Padres who have collected at least 80 plate appearances this year:
  1. Adrian Gonzalez, 146
  2. Scott Hairston, 137
  3. Will Venable, 119
  4. David Eckstein, 110
  5. Chase Headley, 106
  6. Nick Hundley, 94
  7. Kyle Blanks, 71
  8. Tony Gwynn Jr., 58
  9. Jerry Hairston Jr., 52
  10. Everth Cabrera, 49

  I don’t think that’s how anyone drew it up in spring training.

• Over at ESPN’s Baseball Tonight Live, Rob Neyer and I got into some interesting territory. First, he asked about Luke Gregerson’s success and I mentioned the devastating slider. Rob responded by saying, “He’s the new Larry Andersen!” Rob and Bill James, you may recall, once wrote a book about pitchers. In the bit about Andersen, they quote San Diegan Bob Cluck, who knows a thing or two about pitching: “James Rodney Richard and Larry Andersen had the best sliders of any pitchers that I ever coached.” Andersen, of course, stayed in the big leagues for nearly 20 years. Gregerson has a ways to go yet, but yeah, the Andersen comp is a good one.
• The other thing Rob mentioned, which Dick Enberg brought up in the telecast, was Garret Anderson’s propensity for not getting hit by pitches. The numbers were so freakish that I had to run a comparison:

                    PA HBP
  Garret Anderson 9078   8
  Kyle Blanks      292   9

  When Ron Hunt famously got plunked 50 times in 1971, he got hit 9 times or more in four straight months!

Anyway, now I’m just talking flopsy. Good win, good showing by the offense. I wish the Dodgers could send Ramon Ortiz out there every night. Too bad it’ll be Clayton Kershaw on Thursday. He’s kinda good.