Padres surprising many while sitting pretty at the top
One month in, it was amusing.
Two months in, intriguing.
Three months in and ... OH MY LORD! The San Diego Padres are still in FIRST PLACE?! With the second-best record in the NATIONAL LEAGUE?! What the &%$##!?
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| The Padres' success starts with Mat Latos and their NL-best pitching staff. (AP) |
Come, follow me through the clubhouse door. Hurry! Batting practice will be starting soon. ...
See that man sitting quietly in the leather chair, comfortably reading a newspaper? That's All-Star slugger Adrian Gonzalez. Do you know why he can enjoy reading the newspaper? Because he's no longer the subject of more rumors than Lindsay Lohan, that's why.
Everybody thought he'd have been traded long ago, including his employers. How do we know this? Because Gonzalez is a San Diego native, the face of the franchise, more popular in town than fish tacos ... and yet, do you know how many promotions the club scheduled featuring him in this summer? Zero. No Gonzalez bobble-head dolls, no growth charts, no T-shirts, nothing.
He is a very smart man, by the way. When I visited him this spring, way back when the Padres ranked lower than a whale's belly (that's some local SeaWorld humor), he told me this: "We are not finishing in last place. I know our team. We're going to be a lot better than people think."
Mmm-hmm. At 51-37, this is only the third time in club history that the Padres reached the All-Star break with 50 or more wins.
Not only do the Padres lead the majors in overall ERA (3.25), they also rank first at the break in bullpen ERA (2.91), second in starting pitcher ERA (3.33) and second in road ERA (3.67). They pitch here, there, everywhere.
"I knew we were good," Gonzalez shrugs, lowering the Life section into his lap for a moment. "It depends on what you have. The type of team we have, if we play our game, we'll be in a great place. If we make a lot of mental and physical mistakes, it can be a slippery slope."
Over there are the starting pitchers. Gonzalez, a two-time Gold Glove winner, absolutely loves playing behind Jon Garland, Kevin Correia, Mat Latos, Clayton Richard and Wade LeBlanc.
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In fact, Richard (6-4, 3.33 ERA), obtained from the White Sox in last July's Jake Peavy trade, is Gonzalez's favorite pitcher to visit with during games.
"Because you can joke around with him," Gonzalez says.
Of course, the fast-working Richard also is Gonzalez's least favorite pitcher to visit.
"Sometimes you want to go and tell him to slow down," Gonzalez says. "But by the time you get to the grass, he's already throwing the next pitch."
Richard, who was a quarterback at the University of Michigan, also is a favorite target of third baseman Chase Headley, who played baseball at the University of Tennessee. When things get boring in here, Headley enjoys dropping the name "Chad Henne," who started at Michigan ahead of Richard. What a kidder.
The locker over there where the tall kid with blonde hair is standing? That's Latos. He's 6-6, 22 years old and it's pronounced LAH-tose. He's 10-4, and his 2.45 ERA ranks seventh in the NL. Why, you might even say opposing hitters are Latos intolerant, if a zillion people hadn't already cracked that joke.
"Reminds me of Zack Greinke, big-time," says the old man in the clubhouse, 42-year-old Matt Stairs, a teammate of Greinke's in Kansas City from 2004-2006. "He can't wait for day five when it's his turn to pitch. He'd probably love to pitch today and then go to the bullpen to close for the next couple of days."
Sorry. Those jobs are full up right now. Starting with the man at the corner locker by the hallway leading to manager Bud Black's office. That's Heath Bell, currently tied for the NL lead with Cincinnati's Francisco Cordero with 24 saves.
How best to describe Bell?
"Fat," one reliever says. "Pear-shaped."
Might sound mean, were the reliever describing Bell not ... Bell.
About 10 steps to your left, that's set-up man extraordinaire Luke Gregerson, who usually works in the seventh inning. Stay out of his way! Not only did he strike out 51 hitters while walking only six through his first 39 innings this year, he rides a skateboard. Whooosh! A Chicago boy who's totally gone Southern California. Rad!
There are at least two ways to tell Gregerson, who lives on his sinker and slider, apart from Mike Adams, who throws a power sinker: One, you can usually find Adams (2.18 ERA, 46 strikeouts, 11 walks in 41 1/3 innings) working eighth innings. Two, Adams is the one with a shoe fetish.
"I have to admit it," Adams says. "From spikes to tennis shoes, Air Jordan stuff. I caught a lot of grief early in the season. Seemed like every day I was getting a shipment of shoes. Now when we get back from road trips, guys get on me if there are no shoes waiting."
"They clean our shoes for us," Richard says. "I don't think he's gotten that memo yet. Takes him forever to pick which ones to wear. Good thing he's got eight innings to decide."
OK, let's all move along toward the brown, furry thing hanging in Ryan Webb's locker. A leftover Taco Bell-style jersey from the mid-1980s? Uh, no. It's a Chewbacca backpack.
Don't ask. The bullpen has taken to all things Star Wars, mostly because second baseman David Eckstein's wife Ashley is an actress, and one of her current gigs is voicing the character Ahsoka Tano on the Cartoon Network's hit show Star Wars, The Clone Wars. And man, she's provided Star Wars goodies the way your mom sent cookies to your college dorm room.
"Nice girl," Bell says of Ashley Eckstein. "She's not, like, a Hollywood girl. She's just in the business. Like Eck is a great ballplayer, but he doesn't carry himself like the dude who's a World Series MVP [2006]."
So. The Chewbacca backpack? It was provided to Webb, the rookie reliever who has been nails at 3-1 with a 2.27 ERA in 28 appearances, to transport in-game goodies to the bullpen. Which can be a hit-and-miss proposition.
"Lovable guy, but he sure messes up a lot," Bell says. "Something is always missing. There's not enough seeds. Or there's no gum. Or no Advil.
"He'll say, 'You didn't put it in the backpack!' And we're like, 'Dude. It's your job.' He's like your younger brother who tries to be like everybody else but just doesn't get it yet."
Webb also is part of one of the oddest quirks in the game: He's one of five Padres whose father played major league baseball: Webb (dad Hank), Will Venable (Max), Tony Gwynn Jr. and Scott and Jerry Hairston Jr.
How do you tell the Hairston brothers apart?
"One's quiet," Bell says. "And one loves Michael Jackson."
Jerry would be the Hairston who plays a deft utilityman role, often starting at shortstop, chatters incessantly and thrills to Thriller.
Gwynn? He's learned a few things since settling back into his hometown after the Padres acquired him from Milwaukee last year. Among them: He now leaves his car at Petco Park on road trips (where the clubhouse staff periodically starts it) instead of at his father's house (where his Hall of Fame pop has been accused of forgetting to start it, allowing the battery to die).
Come on, move quickly, the season's second half is about to start! Those two guys over there, poring over a scouting report? Catchers Yorvit Torrealba and Nick Hundley. They're sharing the backstop duties so smoothly you'd think they were promised free ice cream if they play nice. Shortstop Everth Cabrera, a baby at 23 who was plucked from Colorado in the 2008 Rule 5 draft? If he can keep his hamstrings intact, he's on his way to developing into one of the game's bigger sparkplugs.
"He's probably only one or two steps slower than I am," Stairs deadpans.
Down the hallway from Bell's locker, madly drawing up plans for the season's second half, are Black and pitching coach Darren Balsley.
What's got them so locked in? Well, Latos, Richard and LeBlanc are so young, none of them have pitched an entire major-league season. The expiration date on their 2010 innings-pitched count is out there, and there are contingency plans to draw up for the stretch run.
Latos, for example, has never pitched more than the 123 innings combined in the minors and majors he worked in 2009, and he was feeling it in September. The Padres probably won't allow him to work more than 150 to 170 innings this summer, and he's already at 106 2/3.
Let's just say this: If Black and Balsley diagnose a plan as crisply as reliever Tim Stauffer did earlier this year, they'll be just fine. One night in San Francisco in May, Stauffer woke up with a stabbing pain. He clicked on his iPhone and diagnosed himself with appendicitis.
"Google's a great thing," Stairs says, before considering the alternative had Stauffer been wrong: "He might have gotten snipped and had no more kids."
What these unlikely NL West leaders do not lack in confidence, they don't lack in chutzpah, either.
"The Padres are going to be on top at the end of the year," Bell vows. "You watch."
