Well, after the game I went to against the Phillies when Padilla looked fairly pedestrian, I thought “OK, he’s been pretty decent, he’ll bounce back against Baltimore”. WRONG.
Vicente Padilla looked like the 2007 edition of himself, even evoking bad memories of Chan Ho Park & Mark Clark. He gave up a run in the first. OK, no big deal, just one run. He looked wobbly in the first inning, but this version of Padilla has been good with dealing with that. Not this game. In the second inning he gave up three runs, then four more in the third. They were all earned, too. Couldn’t pin the numbers on a bad play behind him – Pidente threw up eight earned runs on the scoreboard; not surviving the third inning. It was pretty darned ugly. I think the most telling stat is that he didn’t strike out anyone. While he’s not going to lead the league in strikeouts, he does get his fair share, and to strike out zero is a pretty much the telling sign. The Rangers pen did put up four innings of zeroes before Josh Rupe gave up two more runs in the 8th. But the damage was done, we were never really in this game.
That despite an actual first inning lead when Bradley doubled in a run. In fact, that double was our only extra base hit. We had eight more hits – all singles. Orioles starter Jeremy Guthrie did allow two walks, but our bats were pretty much shut down. In fact, Milton Bradley pretty much was the offense. He was 2-4 with three RBI’s.
This game pretty much boiled down to Vicente Padilla was never in this game, so neither was the rest of the team. When you give up 28 runs total in two consecutive games, you pretty much aren’t going to be in either of those games.
As a Pirates fan who followed Tom Gorzelanny’s outing last night, I feel your pain (in addition to my own!).