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Losing Control

(Photo courtesy/lobshots.com)

In the first few games of this season, pitcher Andrew Cashner has been getting notice because of his pitching speed. Though hitting 100+ is impressive, it’s not when you don’t have any control. Like walking three straight batters in a tie-game situation.The Padres lost 9-8 to the Dodgers tonight in a very bizarre game where the Padres were able to come back from a deficit only to hand the win back.

For the first three innings, the Padres went 1-2-3 except for the first inning, when Cameron Maybin led off the game with a single. Other than that, Aaron Harang put down nine in a row. Just lovely.

Finally, Will Venable broke that with a leadoff home run in the top of the fourth. The Dodgers had a 4-0 lead at the point, so that was huge. We ended up getting three runs in that inning, closing the Dodgers’ lead to one run.

But then the Dodgers got four more runs in the bottom of the fourth. We didn’t score until the top of the seventh, where we got three MORE runs. So run production was not really our problem in this game. We had nine hits, while the Dodgers only had six.

What was the problem was the ninth inning. Going into the inning, we were losing 8-6. Chris Denorfia walked to start the inning, and then there were two swinging strikeouts. Got that, two outs. The Padres do not do well with two outs ever.

Except for today.

Chase Headley hit a two-run game-tying home run WITH TWO OUTS in the top of the ninth inning. Bam. 8-8 all.

So we’re feeling good, right?

Cashner comes in to pitch the bottom of the ninth. We get two quick outs. And then the trouble starts. Andrew walks three batters in a row to load the bases. Joe Thatcher replaces Andrew and throws four straight balls to walk in the winning run. What. On. Earth.

Absolutely pathetic. The bullpen LET US DOWN. That should not have happened. I mean, Joe could have had the decency to at least throw a strike, right? PATHETIC.

Not much is giving me hope for these Padres right now. Sure, it’s insanely early in the season and I’m not giving up on them yet. But this is not fun.

Thankfully, we have the Major League Debut of Joe Wieland to look forward to tomorrow. No pressure, dude. The team is just 2-6 and in desperate need of a win, no biggie.

GO PADRES!

Check out my Storify story on this game.

Follow me on Twitter.

Like “Unfinished Business” on Facebook.

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Joe Wieland to make Major League Debut

The story is all here in my Storify story and all over Twitter.

http://storify.com/kaitybergquist/welcome-to-the-show-pitcher-joe-wieland-to-join-pa

I always love it when guys get called up for their Major League debuts like this. Makes me think of my all-time favorite baseball movie, “The Rookie.” Gets me every time.

Of course, the reason that he’s coming up is because after only one start, Dustin Moseley is most likely out for the year. Prayers for recovery to him of course. It’s not the ideal situation that you’re coming up to replace someone who’s so badly injured, but it’s still a huge moment for Joe.

Congrats and welcome to the Padres, Joe. We’re looking forward to having you.

GO PADRES!

Hoping for a breakthrough…

Field view from Opening Day.

What are we going to do with this team??

Tonight we lost our third game in a row. Meaning that we’ve opened the season with three losses. This is miserable. We absolutely can’t hit, and our pitching is not strong enough to keep us in the game long enough to score some runs. We’ve only scored eight runs in the whole season, and five of them were tonight.

Oh, that’s good, you might be thinking. Five runs in a game is not bad. BUT what you do not realize is that we only had four hits and three of the runs came in by walk. Nothing to say for our hitting prowess, just the weakness of the opposing pitcher.

Don’t get me wrong, the comeback we had was huge. We were down 5-0 going into the bottom of the fifth, and we were able to get five runs to tie the game in that inning. Chase Headley, Jesus Guzman, and Nick Hundley got the walk-in RBIs. So that was a crazy inning.

The game stayed tied all the way until the 11th inning, when that kid Dee Gordan hit an RBI double to break the tie and put the Dodgers up 6-5. Then the bottom of the 11th was really frustrating. We got the lead runner on by walk, sacrificed him over, and then got two quick outs. Naturally, we’re able to get the potential tying run on base and then decide not to do anything about it.

On the bright side, we had no errors.

The starting pitching so far has not been very good at all. Dustin Moseley went five innings today, allowing five hits and five runs. Then a bazillion guys came in from the bullpen and did very well until the 11th.

So we’re 0-3. Against the Dodgers. In Opening Week. This is not fun.

Hopefully we will be able to at least pull of the win tomorrow. PLEASE.

GO PADRES!

Check out my Storify story on this game.

Follow me on Twitter.

Like “Unfinished Business” on Facebook.

No Fireworks

Tonight, the Padres presented Star Wars-themed fireworks after the game. But during the game, there were no fireworks. The Padres were more bland than tofu tonight.

We had a whooping total of three hits in the entire game.

But the defense was not bland. Instead, it was a little more spicy than any of us could handle.

OK, the bland vs. spicy comparison doesn’t really work when describing the defense. It was more like, the defense was so terrible that I was ready to jump off the Toyota Terrace.

Cory Luebke started off the game with a three-pitch strikeout, but things didn’t go so peachy for the rest of the game. Not even for the rest of the inning, for that matter. He ended up allowing a two-run double to get the team into a hole early, not that we would have been able to come back from anything.

Chad Billingsley, starting for the Dodgers, was brilliant. He made it all the way to the 9th inning, hit 100 pitches and got taken out of the game to very loud booing from the Padres fans. We did not appreciate what he did to us.

It was the top of the third that was the worst half inning ever. With one out, Mark Ellis doubled, Matt Kemp hit a grounder to third that should have been routine for Chase Headley, but instead he decided to throw it funny and Alonzo had issues with it at first. He went to try to get the out at home and threw that away too. Nice. Then while the next batter was at the plate, Cory threw the ball into center field. I think he was trying to catch the runner on second. Juan Rivera then hit a pop fly to right field, where three guys decided to go for the ball. All three of them missed it, of course.

It was the most miserable inning. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was one thing after another. I thought I was watching a Little League game. Believe me, I remember my little brother’s games where the ball would not stop being throwed in the wrong direction. I mean, over the past few years, our defense has been the one thing that’s been more than okay. If we don’t have our pitching, offense and now defense, what do we have?

We only were given two errors, but we deserved at least six. That’s five errors in the first two games of the season. Ugh.

Luebke left after 4.2 innings with six runs and nine hits tagged onto him. But not all of them were his fault. His defense was not behind him today.

Micah Owings came in in relief and had an impressive outing. He went 3.1 innings and only allowed one hit and one walk. Andrew Cashner also threw a scoreless inning.

It was a really bad 6-0 loss. I was not happy with our boys. At all.

At least the fireworks were cool.

GO PADRES!

Check out my Storify story about this game – http://storify.com/kaitybergquist/padres-lose-again

Follow me on Twitter – @kaitybergquist

Follow my friend Colleen’s Padres blog – http://colleen.mlblogs.com/

 

Storify Stories

Thanks to my journalistic connections, I recently discovered this awesome website called Storify where you can pull content from all sorts of websites and make a story. It’s especially effective with Twitter. I made one for Opening Day today, and then made one for tonight’s game. Since Padres fans are such entertaining tweeters and Storify is so much fun, I might make a habit of it. Here are the two that I’ve done so far:

Enjoy!

GO PADRES!

Mat Latos to Reds, Padres get four players

NOOOOOOOOO!

Okay, he wasn’t the best pitcher, especially in the past year. But really? Really Padres front office? Why not just trade away Nick Hundley and Chase Headley while we’re at it? Why not trade away all recognizable players so we can pay to watch players whose names we do not even know?

Mat Latos was traded to the Reds today for RHPs Edinson Volquez and Brad Boxberger, INF Yonder Alonso, and C Yasmani Grandal.

At least we got something good in return.

I feel a little better now. Now that I think about it, Mat wasn’t good at all in the past year. I don’t think Mat is going to be that good next season. So we probably got the better end of the deal.

But still. It kind of stinks that the Padres are trading away so many people. Yesterday we traded Aaron Cunningham to the Indians for Cory Burns, a pitcher. The only reason I don’t like this trade is because Aaron was the last player left on the Padres who we traded Kevin Kouzmanoff away for. So essentially, that deal wasn’t worth it because none of the players we got are left on the team. Oh well.

The baseball world is abuzz with this Latos trade. Almost all of the trending topics on Twitter in the United States are about this trade. It’ll be interesting to see how things go when the season starts for the additions of both teams.

GO PADRES!

Happy 2nd Birthday, Unfinished Business!

First, I have to apologize for being so stupid that I didn’t even know my own blog’s birthdate. For some reason, I was completely convinced that it was the 28th of June until yesterday I dug all the way back in the archives and realized that it was actually the 23rd. Oops. So, this is a little late, but better late than never 🙂

This has been a very interesting year in my fanhood. Only about a month after this blog’s first anniversary, our ace and homegrown boy Jake Peavy was traded. I was extremely upset at the Padres for that, and it was a rough time to go through. Surprisingly, I can look back on that trade and say that it really was for the best. The team has gained a lot more than it lost.

It was also during this year that I lost my all-time favorite baseball player, Kevin Kouzmanoff. That was even harder than losing Jake. Even now, I don’t see a good, solid reason why they had to trade my baby. Obviously we did get some good players in return for him (Scott Hairston and Aaron Cunningham) but I think we could have gone without them. Sigh. We can’t change what happened but no matter where he goes, Kouzie will always be my favorite baseball player.

In the second half of the season last year, the Padres really picked things up. I don’t know what it was, but I think it had a lot to do with all the young guys coming up and getting consistent playing time. The youth movement worked really well.

We didn’t really leave our last-place standing in the NL West, but we were winning consistently, and that was good enough. All through the offseason, the big question was, are the Padres going to keep playing like that next season? Is this second half going to carry over? Is this winning thing really going to stick?

It was in this time of uncertainty that I really started to think about the nature of my fanhood. I’m a die-hard Padres fan. But as I saw all these San Diego icons leaving, I had to really examine what my fanhood was. And in that, I realized that I am a Padres fan. I am a fan of the team. It doesn’t really matter who the players are, as long as there are 25 guys on that roster, I cheer for them no matter what. Kevin Kouzmanoff was a HUGE part of my fanhood, but when he was taken away, what was left? It was just the team. It was just the San Diego Padres.

I think the Kouz trade really did effect my fanhood in a bad way, though. I have not been as motivated to listen to the games, or to blog, or to follow the Padres at all. Obviously, I am a huge Padres fan, but your fanhood is enriched so much more when you’ve got a special player to look out for and to cheer for. Ever since Kouz was kicked out, I haven’t had that. It’s kind of been rough, but I know that my fanhood will pull through and hopefully get a second wind. Hopefull I’ll be able to find a new Padres favorite soon. Lance Zawadzki was getting pretty close to that spot, but then the Padres sent him down. Boo.

This is my fourth year of being a Padres fan. Isn’t it amazing how fast time goes by? For two of those years I’ve been absolutely priveledged to be a part of the MLBlogs community. It’s been so much fun blogging here. I am so thankful that I got to be in this group of baseball lovers. I don’t think my blog would be doing as well if I was at an independant website. Being a part of this group is so much fun! I am extremely happy to be here and to be celebrating two years of blogging!

I expanded my horizons a little this year. Instead of promoting my blog exclusively in MLBlogs, I started connecting with some of the other Padres blogs out there like Gaslamp Ball, RJ’s Fro, and the Friarhood. I also extended into Facebook and Twitter for promoting.

I really would encourage you guys to “become a fan” of or “like” or whatever it is they call it these days on the blog’s Facebook page. Every time I put up an entry I post the link on that page. I think it’s helpful to people so that they don’t have to remember to go to my blog everyday, they can just see the link on their Facebook newsfeeds and go straight to it from there. 

I don’t really tweet that much, usually the only times I do is when I don’t have anything else to do and I’m listening to the game…which isn’t often. I don’t always post the links to my entries every day either, so the Facebook page would be the better place to go. But I’m going to try to be better about updating both consistently.

Okay, here’s some stats:

Rankings: MLBlogs Latest Leaders List (over the past two years): 44, 30, 21, 25, 24, 31, 23, 22, 36, 29, 31, 31, 21, 19, 15, 17, 21, 19, 22, 18, 10, 11, 11 

MLBlogs 2009 Leaders: #20 (out of 100)

Entries: 463

Comments: 2279 

Hits: I think I’m getting about 2,000 hits a week.

Here are a few of my favorite entries from the past year:

     Lamenting the heat and our losing trends.

     I was soooo upset about the Padres getting no-hit that I abandoned the them for a   weekend and fled to the Red Sox.

     The Padres were able to stay out of last place for quite a while, but all good things come to an end…

Thank you so much to everyone here at MLBlogs. I love this place and it’s been so much fun blogging with you all. Thank you for making this an amazing experience for me. I love reading your blogs!

Thank you so much to all the guys at Gaslamp Ball, RJ’s Fro, and the Friarhood. Your blogs are all so great and so much fun to read. I am extremely grateful to you guys for linking my entires and blog on yours. I know it’s helped my readership a ton and I can’t thank you enough!! It’s a pleasure to be part of such an elite group of Padres bloggers!

Thank you so much to my MLBlogs Padres buddies, Hyun Young and John!! Both of you, it’s so much fun to talk Padres on Facebook and Twitter. Hyun Young, it’s so much fun to hang out with you at Petco and your love of the Padres inspires me. I still want to meet Eck sometime! 

Thank you to all my readers. I’ve said it time and time again, but without you guys, there would be no purpose for me to write this blog. Thanks for putting up with me through the good times and the bad. Thank you for all the support and the comments. You guys are amazing!

Here’s a shoutout to everyone I personally know who reads this blog. You know who you are. Thanks so much for supporting my fanhood and this blog. It always thrills me so much when one of you comes up to me and tells me that you’ve been reading it. Thank you thank you thank you!

Thanks to my Twitter followers and my Facebook fans. Thanks to my amazing family and super amazing friends. I love you guys!

Thanks to my Heavenly Father, who has blessed me so much. Without You I am nothing. May I always give glory to You in everything that I do.

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday dear Unfinished Business

Happy birthday to you 

happybirthdayunfinishedbusiness.jpg Thank you all so much.

GO FIRST-PLACE PADRES!!