San Diego Padres Beat Giants Again, More Random Thoughts

The San Diego Padres took three-out-of-four from the San Francisco Giants over the weekend. Here are some random musings from yesterday’s win.

The first batter that San Diego Padres’ rookie left-hander Joey Lucchesi faced yesterday, Austin Jackson, creamed a ball to left-center field that Franchy Cordero was able to track down, calling off Cory Spangenberg.

Aside from a few other hard-hit balls, the young lefty further otherwise solidified his position as a certified up-and-comer for the Friars and their pitching staff.

The looping curve Lucchesi throws, with a little refining and added-experience, is terribly impressive. This pitch alone could propel him to the upper-crust of MLB hurlers, but his other pitches are pretty darn good too.

Thoughts on Giants’ Beede

Tyler Beede, a highly-touted, former first-round draft pick making his second MLB start for the Giants, started off strong but ended up getting hit hard yesterday by the Padres and never made it out of the fourth inning.

He’s got a ton of talent (his curve and changeup are high-quality pitches, as well as his two-seam) and most likely has a bright future ahead of him in this game, but the consistency just isn’t quite there yet.

This much is clear, as evidenced by his two, two-out baserunners allowed in the third, followed by a frozen-rope, two-RBI double from Christian Villanueva, and then, of course, by completely unraveling in the fourth.

More Padres’ ramblings

Carlos Asuaje looks to be snapping out of his early-season funk. His second-inning single was his second base hit in as many at-bats after a 0-for-17 drought.

He proceeded to leave Villanueva stranded on second-base to end the third, so he’s obviously still working some stuff out.

Here’s to a heads-up piece of baserunning by Spangy in the second-inning, stealing second-base and taking advantage of the chance that was afforded to him by a non-attentive Beede.

The seemingly reviled Chase Headley made a terrific playÂ at first-base to start a 3-6-3 inning-ending double play in the third. Eric Hosmer hopes to be back in the lineup tonight, as per reports.

Friars’ had a big day all-around

Headley led off the Padres’ fourth-inning with a walk. Spangenberg then laced a double to the gap in left-centerfield to score Headley from first and the Friars were out to a two-run lead.

After an Austin Hedges pop-fly and a Lucchesi strikeout, the Padres went off for two more runs on a Jose Pirela ground-rule double to score Spangy and a Freddy Galvis single to score Pirela.

This team smelled blood in the water and attacked an under-prepared and under-experienced Tyler Beede, chasing him after 3.2 innings. Well done.

Lucchese notched two more strikeouts in the fifth inning and one more in the sixth to finish his day with a line of six innings pitched, one earned run on five hits, nine strikeouts, and no walks.

I originally had a paragraph here about who Lucchesi reminds me of, which I turned into 300-or-so words that you can find here.

More Padres’ offense

Christian Villanueva has been crushing the ball over this past weekend. After his two-run double earlier, he added a long home run in the fifth to give the Padres a 6-1 lead (video from FSSD).

Pirela added another single in the sixth, his second of the day, then came around to score on a Franchy Cordero single later in the inning to extend the Friars’ lead to 7-1.

After Spangy walked and Matt Szczur (who just continues to hit when given the opportunity) singled, Pirela struck again with a two-run triple to make it a 9-1 game.

After yesterday’s games, Jose Pirela leads the National League in hits with 24, is tied for first in triples (2), and is tied for second in the NL with seven doubles, and, just for kicks, he’s also tied for 18th in the league with ten runs batted in.

Next: Joey Lucchesi Reminds Me Of...

He really has been filling the void left by the absence of Wil Myers and Eric Hosmer, to a lesser extent. Let’s hope this continues tonight versus the Dodgers.

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