Friar Watch

Chris Young: One of the most interesting pitchers in the big leagues, Chris Young is a power pitcher who is lucky to break 90mph on his fastball yet routinely blows guys away with the high heat. He uses his height to maximum advantage with a big leg kick and raises his glove hand almost to full extension over his head as he delivers the pitch, that has to distract the batter.

Early last season Young threw 4 seam fastballs almost exclusively. Then he started working in a breaking ball the second or third time through the order. His command wasn’t real strong but it was enough to keep hitters from sitting on the fastball As the season wore on he mixed in the curveball right from the beginning and developed better command. Tonight he’s also shown a nice changeup to go with the curve.

Young lost his command a little in the third and was close to being yanked but induced a bases loaded fly ball from Bengie Molina to end the inning. He was back to normal for the 4th and 5th.

Another rough patch in the 5th. Young nearly wriggled off the hook after he got Molina to ground out on the first pitch but back to back singles drove him from the game, leading to another Cla Meredith appearance.

Cla Meredith: Cla came in with two on, two out and after walking Ryan Klesko to load the bases got Dave Roberts on a grounder to second. Another strong outing for Meredith.

Scott Linebrink: New manager Bud Black shows he’s not going to mess with a good thing and sticks with the Meredith-Linebrink-Hoffman combo for the last three innings. Last year Linebrink had a lot of trouble getting three outs in a row and this year starts the same way. First batter hits what should be a single to center but Cameron came in to rob him. Next batter hits it almost to the same spot, just a little more to the right, and it falls in for a single.

The announcers mentioned that Linebrink worked on his conditioning and lost about 10 pounds. He looks more fit and his fastball seems to have more life to it.

Strikeout on a split (possibly a changeup) for out two.

Sharp grounder to second for the third out. Not a bad outing at all. Linebrink looked sharp despite the hard hit balls.

Trevor Hoffman: Hoffman is just amazing. As long as he can maintain a 10mph difference between his fastball and change Trevor can pitch as long as he wants. The guy is throwing 85 mph fastballs and major league hitters just watch it go by because they’re looking for the change. Trevor picked up where he left off last year, three up and three down with some Bugs Bunny change ups.

So far we’re two games in and all the Padres pitchers look great, performing as well as can be expected. Chris Young was a little shaky but he recovered nicely until running out of gas.