• 11-5 Padres

How do the Padres do it? They lose a horrible series to the Giants. The last game was an extra inning loss. And then they go to Colorado, and they hit like crazy. In the first inning, we got two runs off of Greg Reynolds. Will Venable led off with a double. After Luis Rodriguez sac-bunted him over, he scored on Brian Giles’ single. Giles scored on Adrian Gonzalez’s double. So, Wade LeBlanc settled in with his lead. In the 3rd, the barrage continued. It went Rodriguez single, Giles single, then Gonzalez home run, his 33rd. After that, Kouz tripled and Chase Headley doubled him in. One out later, Matt Antonelli hit his first major league homer. Wade LeBlanc singled, but that was all for the inning. In the 4th, Adrian got his third hit of the game, his second double. Headley drove him in with his second double of the night. With a 9-0 lead in the 4th, LeBlanc ran into a little trouble named Troy Tulowitzki. The Rockies went walk, single, single, before Tulowitzki came to the plate. With a count of 1-1, he drove it out for a grand slam. It was 9-4 Padres at this point. But no worries, Wade was calm, and he went two more scoreless innings. In the 7th, Antonelli walked and later scored on Giles’ double. Cla Meredith had a scoreless 7th. Mike Ekstrom pitched the remaining two innings. He did allow a home run, but otherwise was very good. In the top of the 9th, Drew Macias hit his second major league home run. We win! We had 18 hits. Everyone in the lineup except Nick Hundley had hits. Even Wade LeBlanc had 2 hits and a sac bunt. This season has been horrible on the team level, but some of these players have been fantastic. Look at Adrian. With the homer and 4 RBIs last night, he has 33 homers and 109 RBIs on the year. He has been amazing! Brian Giles is almost unstoppable. He had 3 more hits last night, raising his average to .305. Wow. He has been on base 24 out of the last 25 games. He also has an 8-game hitting streak. And these young guys, again, are a HUGE positive. LeBlanc, Venable, Rodriguez, Headley, Antonelli, Macias, and Edgar, you could point to any of these guys as the ones who won the game. This series looks like it’s going in the right direction, but I must point out a few things. In the last 2 series, we started with a solid win. 4-0 against the Dodgers, and 11-3 against the Giants. But then we went on the lose the series. I would also like to point out another series in Colorado, where we won the first game 15-8. The next day we got shutout by Aaron Cook on 79 pitches. We also lost the last game. But, you never know with Coors Field and the Padres. Shawn Estes will be going for us against Ubaldo Jimenez. GO PADRES!!