Throwing The Ball Away

Really?

This team is the result of building an organization to take advantage of Petco Park? Could have fooled me.

Pitching and defense. That is what you need to succeed at Petco Park. It is no big secret. Everyone knows it. And the two are inextricably linked. A good defense creates good pitching. Good pitching, and especially consistently paced pitching, helps create good defense.

Last night, there was some fine pitching at Petco. Unfortuately, it came from the wrong dugout. Okay, Micah Owings looked pretty good and Andrew Cashner had the easy, impressive gas he was advertised as having. Neither could match up with Chad Billingsley, who was both impressive and received impressive help from the lackluster results from Padre hitting.

An awful lot of oh-fer-six going on right now. Jesus Guzman and Cameron Maybin are the only Padres I can think of with multiple hits this season...

And the errors? The third inning last night was horrible. The Dodgers were gifted with two runs in an inning where I'm not sure a single fair ball went farther than 150 feet... even counting the roll. Balls thrown up the third base line, a pickoff attempt thrown into center field... wow. Bring the kids from Opening Day wearing the 1969 uniforms back. They could hardly play worse.

One more game before I am back to West Virginia for a couple months. Hopefully it will feature two major league teams instead of one.