This is why I hate playing a team right after they’ve been swept by their rivals. The Giants embarrassed the Dodgers, who are now taking it out on the Padres.
In the Dodgers’ defense, the club from San Diego isn’t offering much resistance. How do you get dominated by Ted Lilly and Vicente Padilla? They’re competent big-league pitchers, but really:
IP ERA+ Sandy Koufax 2324.1 131 Don Drysdale 3432.0 121 Ted Lilly 1648.2 109 Vicente Padilla 1499.1 101
That’s almost as irritating as hearing the Dodgers rip off the White Sox theme song. C’mon, guys; be original. Randy Newman even wrote a tune with your city’s name in the title. It’s not like folks in Chicago are going to use that anytime soon.
I would kill for a good song with San Diego in the title. Actually, Tom Waits wrote one… not exactly a pick-me-up. Mel Torme’s “They Go to San Diego” swings hard but nobody knows it.
On another note, I hope Tony Gwynn Jr. got the good pillows last night. Watching Chris Denorfia out in center the past couple of games brought back nightmares of Brady Clark and Jason Lane in 2007. Those, I don’t need.
Kevin Correia starts for the Padres in Thursday’s finale. Chad Billingsley gets the call for the Dodgers. He’s a good pitcher, but let’s not turn him into Dazzy Vance. Just sayin’…
What could make last night’s game worse? Spending the money and time to drive up to LA to witness this debacle in person. Which we did.
Each time Denorfia would catch up to the ball late, or muff it, or otherwise look a bit lost, I’d think “If Junior was in, that wouldn’t have happened”. TG couldn’t have done any worse at the plate, either.
Other annoyances included seeing the Gonzalez Shift work to perfection, Padilla’s “soap bubble” (tm, Vin Scully) “baby eephus” (tm, me) confound the Padre batters, watching a grounder glide smoothly under Chase’s glove, and the “Daily Double” card from Jeopardy popping up on the scoreboard screen every time the Dodgers got another two-base hit (one or two per inning, or so it seemed).
On the plus side, we left as the Dodgers were coming to bat in the 8th, so we missed that outburst. Also, a Dodger fan and I arrived at a concession line at the same time. Seeing my Padre hat, he graciously let me go first–after all, as he said, we were getting no-hit (at that time) by Padilla.
Oh well, we’re still in first.
I really like Chris Denorfia, but watching him play an out and a single into a double as well as another out into a 2-run bloop single proves that we need Junior in center. He may be slugging about 100 points less than Chris but his OBP is actually a few points higher and it’s not like Chris is lighting up the scoreboard. Tony out there saving a few runs per game is way more important than Denorfia possibly getting a run or two batted in.
The Padres’ performance the last two games is explainable. Padilla isn’t that good overall, but he’s an ace in Dodger Stadium. I looked at his splits, and before last night his ERA was 2.02 at home (1.61 now) and 4.86 away. There’s not much you can do about a guy like that.
Lilly’s big advantage is being a lefty. It’s bad enough Padres LHB can’t hit lefties, but our RHB have poor results against lefties, too. The Padres weakness against lefties may be a big factor in the postseason.
It doesn’t say San Diego in the name, but Buck-0-Nine was writing about San Diego in the song “My Town.”