Pirate Rookies Outduel Jones of Padres, 3-2

The Padres and Pirates fought with kid gloves Friday night.

For the Pirates, pitchers Mike Dunne (age 24), John Smiley (22) and Brett Gideon (23) entered this season with 35 days of major league experience between them.

For the Padres, pitcher Jimmy Jones (23) entered with 22 days.

After 2 1/2 hours at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, it was hard to tell who had aged more. The Pirates won, 3-2, in a victory that left the Bucs waxing over the maturation of their young arms. Padre Manager Larry Bowa was left worrying, when will Jones learn?

For the Pirates, youth was served as Dunne allowed just two runs in seven innings, both involving wild pitches, and Smiley and Gideon finished with a perfect inning each, combining for three strikeouts in the final six batters.

For the Padres, youth was served up as Jones failed to make it out of the sixth inning--again--allowing three runs (one earned) on five hits. All three runs came with two out, and all came after he began the game with four straight strikeouts on 17 pitches.

“What about it?” said Bowa when asked about Jones’ performance. “It was the same as his last five--five innings, four innings, five innings--he can’t get out of the fifth inning.”

To be more precise, in Jones last six starts, he has averaged 5 innings, allowing 35 hits in 32 innings, with 9 walks and 8 strikeouts.

During that time, he is 0-1 with a 4.18 ERA, keeping the Padres’ No. 5 starter winless as a starter (0-4, 5.17 ERA).

The Padres can’t move him to the bullpen because there’s no one to replace him in the starting rotation. At least as of last night, they hadn’t openly discussed sending him down to Triple-A Las Vegas. All they can do is get mad.

“It takes more than a great arm to play this game. You have to be mentally tough,” Bowa said. “To me, Jimmy has to have more mental toughness. I may be wrong, but that’s just looking at it from where I’m at.”

Said Jones: “I’m not looking over in the dugout for him (Bowa). I never look for help. Some nights you last one inning, some nights you last nine. This was one of those nights.

“I had the same stuff in the first as I did in the fifth and sixth. Just two pitches killed me.”

On the other side, Pirate Dunne (6-4, 3.39 ERA) allowed two hits to his first three batters but survived, retiring the next six hitters. He allowed two more consecutive hits in the third and retired the next five batters.

“That’s his makeup,” Pirate Manager Jimmy Leyland said. “You can nurse them along, and help them, but it’s pretty hard to change somebody’s insides. Give Mike credit for that.”

Said Dunne, who retired the last three hitters he faced, leaving the game for a pinch-hitter in the eighth: “I’m the type of pitcher who will not strike out a lot of guys (he struck out five Friday), but I’ll get a lot of ground balls. I can give up hits and keep working hard because sooner or later, one of those ground balls is going to be picked for a double play.

“When you’re talking about ability, it doesn’t matter how many days you have been in the big leagues. Either you can be competitive here, or you can’t.”

For Jones (2-4, 4.55 ERA overall), it’s not a problem of being competitive, but staying that way. In 17 appearances this season, he has averaged four innings a shot, not much considering more than half of those appearances (eight) have been starts.

Friday it was the same. Quite a bit of throwing and very little pitching.

And how he can throw. He started the game by striking out the side on 13 pitches, just three of them out of the strike zone. John Cangelosi, Andy Van Slyke and Johnny Ray, all batted left-handed against the right-handed Jones.

Jones opened the second with a strikeout of lefty Sid Bream. The crowd actually groaned when all the Pirates’ fifth hitter (Bobby Bonilla) did was ground out to shortstop.

It was as if Jones groaned, too, because he walked the next two batters (Barry Bonds, Mike LaValliere) in about the same time it took him to strike out all those guys--on just nine pitches. It is that kind of inconsistency that has driven the Padres quite mad, and even though Jones was lucky enough that the next batter was Dunne, who he retired on a groundout to strand the runners, the pattern was set.

Jones worked out of the third inning, 1-2-3, but would last just six more outs.

The first pitch of the fourth inning was a single to left by Ray. Jones then got two outs, the latter a groundout by Bonilla that moved Ray to second. But sometimes two outs mean nothing to Jones. He promptly gave Bonds a fat pitch that Bonds hit to center to score Ray. On the very next pitch, LaValliere grounded out to end the inning, but isn’t that how it always is?

In the fifth, two outs was another yoke around Jones’ neck. This time it started when Padre third baseman Randy Ready committed the capital offense of letting a Sammy (0 for 4 this season) Khalifa’s lead-off grounder go under his glove. One out later, Ready made a sparkling play on Cangelosi’s bouncer, forcing Khalifa at second for the second out.

But back to Jones. He walked Andy Van Slyke and out came Bowa. Jones responded by going 2-and-0 to Ray, who responded by putting the next pitch up against the center-field wall on a bounce for a two-run double. Again, Jones retired the next batter (Bream) to end the inning, which only made his mistake to Ray more evident.

Jones would not last long enough to get another out. Bonilla started the sixth with a grounder under first baseman John Kruk’s glove. Bonds lined a single to left, and Jones was gone.

Padre Notes Disabled pitcher Storm Davis (torn cartilage in left rib-cage area) threw his second simulated game Friday afternoon, and it still isn’t known if he’s ready for real work even at the minor league level, where he will eventually go for rehabilitation. At 3 p.m., from behind a pitching screen, he threw 60 pitches to Padre reserves Bruce Bochy, Marvell Wynne and James Steels. He didn’t regress from his Monday simulated game, but there was little evident progress either. “It was about the same, he isn’t completely over it,” pitching coach Galen Cisco said. “He still feels it.” The Padres will likely make a decision today on Davis’ immediate future, after examining the effects of Friday’s work on his sore left side. With no pressure from a pennant race, Davis can wait for another week before going to rehabilitation, or he could be throwing in Class-A Reno or Triple-A Las Vegas by the middle of the next week in the first of probably two rehab starts. In any case, the soonest the Padres are counting on his return is after the upcoming nine-game road trip, sometime around Aug. 7. Davis has been missing since the first inning in Los Angeles against the Dodgers July 9. “There’s no reason to rush him back,” General Manager Jack McKeon said. “Do we want to take a chance on bringing him in too early, and then have him hurt again, like with Goose?.” Reliever Rich Gossage hurt his rib cage on March 30, then tried to come back against Cincinnati in the season’s first series and hurt it again, going on the disabled list from April 15 to May 4. Said Cisco: “There is still a little doubt in my mind that Davis is ready to do it (rehabilitation work).” Davis said he wanted to meet with McKeon today before making any comment. . . . Though the bone scan performed on third baseman Chris Brown’s right wrist proved negative, the wrist is still a negative. It is still sore, such that Brown will miss the rest of this weekend’s series with Pittsburgh. He won’t attempt to play again until Tuesday in Cincinnati. This means that for four straight games, counting Thursday when Brown first departed the lineup, Randy Ready will be the third baseman and Tim Flannery the second baseman. Usually they platoon at second. “I come to the park ready to play everyday anyway,” said Ready. Flannery agreed: “You come ready to play, and 80% of the time you don’t, but it’s easier to come down than it is to get yourself up if you aren’t ready to play and suddenly you have to.” Brown was hurt when he was hit in the wrist by San Francisco Giant coach Jose Morales during batting practice in Chicago earlier this month, just before he came to San Diego in the trade. “It was the fourth time he hit me,” Brown said. “I feel a little better, but not a whole lot better. I’ll just rest it for the weekend and see what happens.” If Brown ever has to stay away from the ballpark with an injury, fans will suffer. At San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, he walks along the dugout after batting practice and signs little slips of paper and programs tossed down to him by the kids. “Earlier this year, when I broke my jaw, I was in all kinds of bad moods and wasn’t doing much for the fans,” he said. “I promised my cousin then that I would sign everything. I’ve got a little boy myself, and I wouldn’t want somebody turning him down if he really wanted something.”