Despite that final blowout in Philly we can’t be too upset about a 4-2 road trip against two of the top offenses in the NL. It’s become obvious that releasing Wells wasn’t the answer to the 5th starter problem, but to be fair I don’t think anyone thought it would get better. Getting rid of Wells allows the Padres a little more flexibility through shuffling guys back and forth to Portland.
The Phillies series is a perfect example of why I’ll gladly take Petco over a hitter friendly park. High offense parks really tax a pitching staff and you end up with a lot of games where pitchers are left out there to take one for the team. Sure, Petco can be frustrating but it’s very rare for a game to get out of hand like that.
Remember when we were all worried about how Milton Bradley’s volatility? Who would have thought that his personality and competitive attitude would light a fire under the Padres and get them to compete with some intensity? If we can just get into the playoffs I’m a lot more optimistic about our chances than the last two years. With Peavy, Young (fingers crossed) and Maddux we have a very solid front three and Bradley is the kind of guy I can see taking over a series.
Another day, another Milton Bradley clutch home run, complete with taunting the crowd. As I said in the Ducksnorts comments, Bud Black would be well advised to give Milton the day off tomorrow. He’s a prime candidate for retaliation. I say keep him on the bench and use him as a pinch hitter if needed. The last thing we need is The Regulator getting suspended for charging the mound or getting injured.
Then again, there may be no retaliation. Doug Brocail did a little regulating of his own when he drilled Carlos Ruiz in the thigh but the Phillies didn’t back their guy at all. No one came onto the field, other than a token argument from Charlie Manuel. I guess they all knew he had it coming.
Trevor Hoffman has had some rough outings lately and once again there’s talk that he may be done. I agree that his location has been off lately but he does seem to go through these stretches and the nature of his role and his marginal stuff always makes it seem like the end of the world. Lets take a look at tonight’s outing:
Circles are fastballs, triangles are change ups.
Red = contact was made
Green = Ball
Yellow= Called Strike
White = Swinging Strike
The first at bat, to Jimmy Rollins, was awful. Trevor missed up in the zone with the first two pitches but Rollins let them go for called strikes. He elevated a change up for a foul, then elevated a fastball that Rollins slammed for a double. 4 pitches, any of which could have gone for extra bases.
The next at bat to Iguchi was a little better but Trevor missed badly on the first pitch. As we’ve seen many times before, Trevor will usually try to get a first pitch strike with the fastball low and away. When Trevor gets the first strike batters are hitting .161 off him. When he doesn’t, they’re hitting .302. The count went to 3-2, Trevor grooved an 85mph fastball right down the middle, Iguchi hit what everyone thought was a homerun off the bat but somehow it stayed in the yard. Trevor dodged a bullet on that one.
He dodged another bullet when Chris Coste (who?) flied out on the first pitch.
The Ryan Howard at bat wasn’t as bad as the others, he actually got Howard to swing at a ball off the plate but Blum was playing so deep on the switch that he couldn’t make the throw in time. Run scored.
Trevor finally made a good first pitch against Rowand, fastball low and away. He didn’t fool around from there, throwing two nice change ups in a row to get Rowand for the final out.
So has Trevor lost it? Well he hasn’t lost any velocity, his fastball and change up are both right around the same speed as they were earlier in the year. He’s just not locating well. He’s gone through these stretches in the past and has always worked out of it. I think he’ll be ok but if this continues much longer we might have a real problem.
Another great night for the Padres offense and I give Milton “The Regulator Guy” Bradley all the credit for the recent fighting spirit we’ve seen. After a somewhat dirty slide into second by Carlos Ruiz the Padre left fielder came up with men on in the top of the fifth. After the game Milton told Ted Leitner that after the aggressive play he had to come in and regulate, and he regulated the ball right out of the park. I love Milton Bradley, can you imagine any other Padre saying something like that? Bradley took it personal that the Phillies tried to take out M. Giles and he wanted to make a statement. With Bradley it’s always personal. That’s gotten him into trouble in the past but I really like the guy (as long as he’s on my team). He has a burning desire to win and I really think his return has lit a fire under the offense. Let’s face it, we have a pretty laid back bunch of guys. Hell, I’m a pretty laid back guy myself. Sometimes it takes a hothead to get us laid back guys to wake up.
EDIT: I just saw the Ruiz play on the Channel 4 replay and it was a blatantly dirty play. No attempt to slide, he just ran right into Giles and even stuck his leg out to kick him. Kudos to Maddux for not getting carried away and drilling someone. Blowing the other team out is a much more satisfying revenge.
Well that was an ugly loss. Chris Young has not regained his form after his injury. He’s not locating his pitches and his velocity seems to be down. Hopefully it’s just rust and the injury isn’t still bothering him.
This team’s record in the first half was due largely to the superhuman efforts of the bullpen. The inevitable regression to the mean, possibly aggravated by the overreliance on the pen and resulting mental pressure, has meant that a late inning lead is no longer an automatic win. The pitching staff has carried the team this far, it’s time for the offense to wake up and carry some of the weight.
Speaking of offense, it was great to see Milton Bradley back in the line up. Milton was on base 4 times in 5 plate appearances and was visibly pumped up to score the go ahead run late in the game. I’ve said it before, sign this guy to a multi year deal. I wouldn’t let him play centerfield due to injury concerns but I’d be very comfortable going into next season with Bradley in left.
Tonight’s game features Jake Peavy against Brian Lawrence. After Peavy’s comments about his contract situation this would be the perfect time for him to go out and make a statement. Unfortunately, the Padres offense seems to be at it’s worse against slop throwing pitchers and no pitcher throws more slop than B Law. My predictions:
Peavy: 7 IP, 4 H, 12 K, 10 ER
Lawrence: 7 IP 6 H, 5 K, 2 BB, 0 ER
Padres win 1-0
The Padres offense has been on fire lately so with Woody Williams going for the Astros tonight we can count on a return to form of a lousy pitcher shutting us down for 7 innings. Fortunately we have Peavy going for us tonight and he’s been dominant lately. Prediction: Padres win 2-0.
Over at Gaslamp Ball, Phantom takes a look at the Padre catching situation. I didn’t realize all our guys are free agents. I say resign Bard to a 3 year deal, re-sign LaForest for one year, let Barrett go and maybe sign Ausmus if he’s cheap. It would be nice to have one good defensive catcher on the roster.
There’s some discussion in the Ducksnorts comments about what’s wrong with Adrian Gonzalez. It’s been a disappointing year for A Gon but I’m not going to write him off yet. He’s got a real nice swing and has shown the ability to make adjustments in the past. He says he just got into some really bad habits earlier in the year and has had a hard time getting out of it.
I was going to write something about the Astros but I can’t really find anything interesting to say about them. They’re 8 games back in the Central and out of the Wild Card race and pretty much just playing out the string.
Sorry, I just had to use that lame headline. Jake did a heck of a job hanging around for 6 scoreless innings in the brutal heat and humidity. The bullpen did their part as well, Heath Bell was flat out filthy at times. It would be nice if the offense would stop making scrubs like Anthony Reyes look like aces but slapping around the closer almost makes up for it.
The Pitching Mechanic has a nice analysis of Jake’s mechanics. He notes some areas of concern:
The main thing that concerns me about Jake Peavy is that he breaks his hands with his elbows. As a result, and as you can see in the photos above, his Pitching Arm Side (aka PAS) elbow gets quite high. While it doesn’t get as high as Mark Prior’s or Anthony Reyes’, it is still quite high.
Read the whole thing, as they say.
I love Jake Peavy but something about his mechanics never seems quite right to me; it seems like he’s going to rip his arm off during his follow through sometimes.
Kevin Towers was on 1090 this morning and said David Wells is done as a Padre. They’re leaving it up to him whether he wants to retire, be released or be traded. Classy move on KT’s part. I actually hope Boomer catches on with another team this year and can regain some effectiveness. I just hate to think of a guy with that kind of career going out like that.
Tonight we have Greg Maddux going for us. I hope the bullpen is ready because even in the best conditions we’re lucky to get 6 out of Maddux.
Predictions:
A home run for Adrian and Maddux will execute a bunt within the first two pitches of an at bat.
Hey, the Pads finally got on track, won 4 in a row, swept the hated Gigantes, had some clutch hits, the new guys are looking good. Who’s pitching today? Ah crap. David Wells is starting to remind me of that lame SNL character Debbie Downer.
In his last 4 starts Boomer has given up 26 earned runs in 22.2 innings. That’s a 10.33 ERA folks.
This is how it’s supposed to work. Peavy dominates, the new guys swing the bat, Khalil hits a homer (just as I predicted) and everyone got into the act. Well, everyone except Marcus Giles who went 0 for 4 and was the only starter without a hit or a walk.
Jake Peavy was terrific, 7 IP, 3 H, 10 K and 1 BB. After the game he talked about some adjustments he’s made recently:
Peavy said that he’s making more of a conscious effort to change speeds to get more variance between his mid-90s fastball and his off-speed pitches. That idea was reinforced for him last week while he watched Houston’s Roy Oswalt do just that to the Padres.
“I started off the season fastball-slider, and teams, with all the video, make adjustments,” Peavy said. “Guys were sitting hard [on my fastball]. Guys were having better at-bats.”
If that’s true we should be able to see it in the data. First let’s take a look at his start against the Red Sox back in June:
Most of his pitches are between 85 and 95, indicating fastballs and sliders. Now look at what he did today:
He threw a lot more off speed stuff, right from the beginning. A nice secondary effect of that is he was throwing 95 mph right to the end. Josh Bard was behind the plate today, it’ll be interesting to see if Jake has the same pattern with Michael Barrett behind the plate.
I’m going to start a new tradition here: pre-game predictions. I’ll post my predictions for the upcoming game, feel free to add your own in the comments.
David Wells: 6 IP, 2 ER
Milton Bradley will hit a home run with Brian Giles on base
Khalil will strike out on a breaking pitch out of the zone
2 walks for Brian Giles
Trevor gets the save
