Early and often! That’s how the Padres scored against Mets’ starter Bartolo Colon tonight as they cruised to a comfortable 7-3 victory over the Metropolitans to even the series at one a piece.
The Friars scored in pairs in each of the first three innings. Facing a fastball 14 MPH slower than Syndergaaards last night, and often times located comfortably on the plate the Pads hitters made quick work of Colon. Venable started it with a bunt single. Solarte followed with a single, and Kemp followed suit with the third hit in a row to start the game and drive in Venable to get the boys on the board right away. Upton’s sac-fly scored Solarte and the Fathers lead 2-0.
The next inning Hedges started the rally with a hit and was advanced on a perfect Ross bunt. Venable singled to score Hedges. Will then stole second to set himself up to score, which he did on Solarte’s second hit of the night to put the Pads up 4-0. Nice manufacturing and execution!
In the third the Friars were at it again, this time with the power game. Upton lead off with a blast to left center field to build the lead to 5-0. Alonso followed with a long ball of his own to right to make it 6-0. It was the second time this season that the Friars had hit back to back long balls. The previous time was just a week ago against the Marlins with Alonso teaming up with Kemp that time to do the damage. Colon was eventually chased later in the inning for his shortest outing since May 2012.
Tyson Ross was the happy recipient of the offensive outburst. Interesting outing for him in two ways. First he appeared to throw a lot more fastballs than normal. That’s not necessarily a bad thing whether planed or out of necessity, and with the movement he had on his 94-96 MPH heater he was able to record outs just fine though five innings. The second unusual characteristic was that he gave up a home run…What?!? Yep, his streak of 16 consecutive starts without surrendering a long ball came to an end when Lucas Duda jumped on an inner half slider and put it into the left field seats. His 16 game homerless streak was the longest in Pads history, and his 100.0 innings were the third longest behind David Roberts, and Randy Jones. Oh well…start another streak Tyson!
What really mattered was that Ross put up 5 innings of 1-run ball to keep the Friars in control of the game. He left after the 5th due to his quad tightening up after being struck there by a hard comebacker in the 4th. It is not deemed to be anything serious, but with the big lead it made sense to not push the leg and give the bullpen some work.
The Pads scored their seventh run in the 6th on a Solarte double and Upton single. Yangervis would end up with four hits on the night, including two doubles, and RBI, and two runs scored. Venable, Upton, Alonso, Gyorko, and Hedges would all end up with multiple hits on the evening.
There weer two other interesting twists to an otherwise lopsided pads victory. First, Duda, who broke Tyson’s homeless streak, would go on to hit two more homers on the evening to single handedly account for all three of the Mets runs on three long balls. It brought his total to four homers in the past two games. Talk about on fire! Don’t want to let him beat you tomorrow.
The second interesting event was the in game announcement through various social mead outlets that the Mets had made a trade with the Brewers for Carlos Gomez, in exchange for the inured Zack Wheeler and the night’s starting shortstop Wilmer Flores. Flores was apparently brought to tears by the news and was visibly wiping his eyes dry with his glove as he stood at his position after receiving a round of appreciative applause from the Mets faithful during his previous at bat. It was curious to see Flores still in the game given the presumed circumstances, but as it turns out the applause and tears were premature. Until the deal is done, there is no deal. This deal was apparently far from consummated when the news leaked. Concerns by the Mets on the condition of one of Gomez’s hips reportedly scuttled the exchange and after the game it was announced by GM Sandy Alderson that no trade had transpired. Good lesson for all that until an official announcement is made by the clubs anything can happen and sometimes does.
No, there were no Padres trades today. In fact, several of the prime suitors for some of the Pads biggest pieces made deals elsewhere, so who knows what may or may not happen now. One thing we know for sure is that A.J Preller is creative and persistent, so even though the publicly rumored names may no longer be in the hunt for certain players there is no telling what AJP may be working on. Only time will tell, and don’t forget the July 31st is not a hard deadline so even if nothing happens in the next 48 hours, that doesn’t mean something may not take place later as guys clear the waiver wire over the next several weeks.
For now the focus, as it should be, is on winning this series. Cashner will go to the bump for the Pads for the rubber match. First pitch will cross the plate at 9:10 am PST. Uncle teddy and I will have the call for you with a cup of java on the Mighty 1090!
Scan
One Comment
matt
July 30, 2015 at 6:48 am