Tagged: all-star break

Solid Baseball

Today’s game was sooo good! It was just what we needed: a win!

I can’t say enough about Mat Latos. This kid is a stud. He’s doing amazing things for this organization right now, and I know he’s only going to get better. I can’t wait to see him pitch in the upcoming years. I can honestly say that he is becoming our next Jake Peavy.

Today he threw seven innings of shutout ball. He only allowed five hits while striking out eight. Plus, he went 2-for-3 with his first major league homer. We needed a solid outing, and you can’t ask for much more than that. Amazing outing by Matty.

We had some great offense today. We hit four home runs: Mat, Chris Denorfia, Chase Headley, and Jerry Hairston. Yorvit Torrealba also drove in a run.

Luke Gregerson has been struggling his last few outings, so I’m really glad that he’s going to get a break next week. Today he gave up the only run the Nationals got, but it was okay since we were up by a lot. Still, I’m a little worried about him right now. Hopefully he’ll be able to have a nice relaxing break and will be ready to get back into things after the break.

It was a really great game. I was so happy that we were able to get the third game of the series at least. We’re okay. Still have a substantial lead in the NL West, one more series till the break, we’re good.

So, how are we doing going into the All-Star break? I’d say we’re doing excellent. I know that we’re a ton better than a lot of people thought we would be by now. I didn’t know where we were going to be by the second half of the season. I honestly had no idea. I was content to take it one game at a time and see where we went. And here we are, top of the NL West.

The big question is, are we going to be able to continue this through a whole second half? Is our pitching strong enough? Will our bats stay hot? We’ve been relatively injury-free so far. Will that continue? Will we been as good as we are now?

In my mind, I have no doubt that we will sustain our first-place lead. I don’t see any reason at all for us to suddenly go bad in the second half. We can do this. I think this team is going to do great things. There’s been an atmosphere around this team that I have never felt before. It’s exciting, not knowing what this team is going to do. They’ve played well above expectations this year, and I think it will continue.

Rockies and Jorge De La Rosa tomorrow. But we’ve got Kevin Correia going for us. No sweat.

GO FIRST-PLACE PADRES!!  

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Get It Going, Guys!!

There’s just a couple of things I’d like to touch on about the game last night.

First of all, Luke Gregerson. The guy has been absolutely amazing for us this year. Last night he came in to pitch in the top of the 10th and did not do well at all. I know that these guys can’t be perfect all year, so I guess it was okay that he had a bad outing, but it was still tough. He walked two batters in a row, which is unheard of for Luke. It was seriously disturbing to listen to. Luke’s been so amazingly solid this season, it was just shocking to see him do anything different than domination.

He’s only walked six batters all season. It was definitely disappointing that he allowed those three runs in the top of the tenth to lose the game, but it’s okay…as long as we win the next three games in this series.

The other thing was that Scott Hairston got ejected in the bottom of the eighth. As the umpire called him out on strikes, Scotty flipped his bat. When he picked it up, the umpire started having words with him. Scott responded, and the ump threw him out almost instantly. I’m not sure what Scotty said that warranted him getting thrown out, but I was really pleased with him. Good for him to get in the ump’s face and get fired up. I think it’s good for the team to see some fire like that.

The Padres have not been doing that great this week, and that worries me a little. Hopefully we will be able to pick things up for our last couple series until the All-Star break.

Speaking of the All-Star break, look where we are right now. We’re on top of the NL West, and we have been for a really long time. We’ve almost reached the halfway mark of the season. I think we’re going to make it. If we can go a whole first half winning consistently and holding onto our first-place lead, I think we can do it for the second half too.

Can you believe the season is almost half over already? It just amazes me how fast the time’s been going. Incredible.

I know we’ve got a lot of season left. It’s going to be great.

Okay, we’ve got a couple of aces going up against together tonight. Roy Oswalt vs. Mat Latos. I am counting on Mat to have a great outing tonight. We need a solid outing from him, a bunch of offense from the guys, and some great defense. Bottom line, we need to win this game. We’ve got to get back up and get going. We NEED this series!!

GO FIRST-PLACE PADRES!!!