Game Reflections - #44 vs Brewers

Hmmm.  5 Infielders.  Will it work?

 Good Grief.  Has it really been 15 games since I last saw one live?  Wow.  Off we go.

Off to a rough start as Aaron Harang walked Corey Hart and allowed a single to Ryan Braun.  After Braun stole second, it looked like the Padres would be down early again.  But Harang wriggled out of it, getting Prince Fielder to pop to short and Casey McGehee hit back to the box.

We missed part of the first inning while eating at the Hall of Fame Grill inside the Western Metal building.  The Nachos were good.  Unfortunately for me, something in the chicken set off a nasty case of heartburn which made for a rather uncomfortable next 6 innings.  It was not food poisoning; I'm pretty sure it was an allergic reaction.  Sucked to be me.

The Brewers would only get one more runner to third, Fielder in the fourth inning, as Harang settled down and worked 8 scoreless innings.

On the other side of the ledger Chris Narveson was as good as Harang.  Narveson worked 7 1/3 innings, and the Padres only got 2 runners to third off him (Denorfia in the third, Maybin in the seventh).

Without a lot of offense, this game was quick. 1:45 in we were singing 'Take Me Out To The Ball Game".  Milwaukee took Narveson out in favor of Kameron Loe, who worked around McGehee's error.

When I got home I found two tweets from Cameron Maybin expressing some frustration with the official scorer.  During the seventh inning, he hit a hard ground ball that McGehee bobbled, and beat McGehee's throw to first.  It was ruled an infield single.  After the game the official scorer reviewed the play and changed it to E-5.  The tweets have since been deleted.

I'm not saying Maybin did anything wrong.  It was an emotional moment and I appreciated the candor.  I will say that when I saw the play live I thought it was E-5.  Maybin is a very fast man, but if McGehee fields that ball cleanly Maybin is out by a step. In my opinion the official scorer got it right after his review.  Also, he would not have reviewed the play unless someone asked him to.

Ludwick led off the ninth with a soft single, but the game turned on Black's decision to pinch run for him.  I liked the aggressiveness there, playing to win at home.  Because of that, Brewer pitcher Marco Estrada spent a lot of time trying to keep Eric Patterson close at first.  Pitchout, ball high, then another ball as Patterson stole second.  With a 3-0 count on Hawpe the Brewers walked him intentionally.

The rest was predictable.  Maybin laid down a pretty bunt to move the runners over with 1 out.  Headley was intentionally walked to load the bases.  Kotsay came in from left to play the infield, but it didn't matter as Orlando Hudson hit the first pitch he saw to right, driving Hart back and plenty deep enough to score Patterson from third.

A nice win and a series split with Milwaukee.  The Padres are now 1-0-2 in their last 3 series, their best stretch of the season, after splitting 2 game sets with Arizona and the Brewers.  They open the Inter-league portion of the scheduel tomorrow when Seattle comes to town.

We did a Podcast tonight.  It's short - 19 min long - but it can be found here.