Nolte’s Pitching Goes to Waste as the Padres Blunder to a 9-2 Loss

Eric Nolte outpitching Dwight Gooden in front of 44,767 on a Sunday afternoon at Shea Stadium? Is that mad?

It’s as mad as the Padre defense blowing two different rundowns on two different basepaths with the same runner on the same play.

Or as mad as the Padre bullpen, which had walked only 17 in its last 57 innings, walking three in one inning and hitting another and watching all four runners score at just about the same time.

Yes, Nolte outpitched Gooden Sunday, but, for the first time in this series, the Padres out-blundered the Mets in helping them to a 9-2 victory. Thus the Mets got back at the Padres for taking some steam from their pennant race.

“Oh, I don’t know, I guess winning two out of three here is not bad,” said Padre Manager Larry Bowa, expressionless, shortly before he and the club boarded a charter flight home.

The Padres were 3-3 on an Eastern trip that might be considered the season’s best; when they started the trip in Philadelphia last week, they had a 5-22 record in Eastern Division ballparks.

On Tuesday, the Padres will open a nine-game home stand against Montreal, Philadelphia and New York. Bowa--whose team has won 15 of its last 23 games and needs to win 24 of its remaining 38 to finish with a better record than last season’s 74-88--hopes Sunday’s game was only a temporary setback.

“Our bullpen was tired . . . and that one play turns the ballgame around and . . . “ Bowa said, shaking his head, tired himself.

This is not to diminish the performance of Nolte (1-2), a 23-year-old rookie who had his best outing since his splendid debut five starts ago. Ignoring the fact that he was about one Cy Young Award, one Rookie of the Year award and one world championship ring shy of Gooden, Nolte held the Mets to two earned runs on five hits in six innings. Gooden allowed two earned runs on seven hits in 6 innings.

“Nolte has been very impressive. He’s got his feet on the ground here real good,” Bowa said. Nolte started the season in Class-A and has a 1.96 earned-run average after five big league starts.

“He’s kept us in every game,” Bowa said. “He might make it easy for us next spring (to choose starters).”

Nolte’s only problems were home runs by the Mets’ leading home-run hitters--Howard Johnson and Darryl Strawberry, each with 31. Johnson hit his second-inning homer to left field so hard, Nolte threw out his neck trying to watch it.

Pitchers often joke about such injuries. This is not a joke.

“I’m serious, on Johnson’s homer, I felt something pop in my neck as I twisted it around,” Nolte said. “It still hurts.”

But what really hurt Sunday was, as Bowa put it, that one play. It indeed turned the game around. It all started in the fifth inning, with the score tied 2-2, with, naturally, Nolte facing Gooden.

Nolte, who had been averaging a walk every 1.35 innings, had walked only one so far Sunday. But he started by falling behind, 3-and-0, to Gooden. Two pitches later he got one up that Gooden looped into shallow right field.

Tony Gwynn charged and dived in front of the ball, but, instead of catching it, wound up rolling over it. Gwynn picked himself up, picked the ball up and realized, to his delight, that Gooden was standing between first and second base.

But instead of throwing to second and at least keeping Gooden where he was, Gwynn threw to first baseman Carmelo Martinez to start a rundown. But Martinez ended that hope when he skipped the ball past shortstop Garry Templeton at second and into left field. The official scorer charged Gwynn with a throwing error because he did not throw to second.

By now, Gooden wasn’t sure where to go, so he headed toward third and froze between second and third when Marvell Wynne picked up the ball in left. Except Wynne dropped it, kicked it and watched it skid behind him, and Gooden advanced to third on the second error of the play.

While Gooden dusted himself off, the Padres just stood momentarily and stared at each other: Gwynn staring at Martinez staring at Templeton staring at Wynne, who just looked at the sky.

“I thought the play was over when Gooden got to second,” said third baseman Randy Ready. “Then all of a sudden, I see Gooden running at me, and I wonder, ‘What’s going on?’ ”

“Not often it happens twice to the same guy on the same play,” said second baseman Tim Flannery. “It was a tough wind today, tough sun, tough field. It was crazy.”

The Padres had just tied the game in the top of the fifth with a run on Stanley Jefferson’s infield single.

“You could sense a little momentum change,” said Bowa, who was proven correct when the next batter, Mookie Wilson, hit a grounder to third to score Gooden with what turned out to be the winning run.

Then the Padres botched the seventh inning with walks and wild pitches.

With the usual seventh-inning arms, Mark Davis and Lance McCullers, resting after extended weekend work, Keith Comstock replaced a tiring Nolte to start the inning. Comstock had walked 11 in his last 23 innings. This time, he walked two in one-third of an inning.

And this was after the first batter he faced, Wilson, lofted an easy fly to center field that Jefferson never saw, allowing to drop in front of him for a single.

“With the sun and bright shirts, I saw it go up, but that’s all I saw,” said Jefferson. “For all I know, it could have been a pop to the catcher, a pop to the pitcher.”

By the time Comstock departed four batters later, the Mets had one run, runners on first and second and a bored crowd that had seen Comstock throw seven straight balls in one stretch.

“I let that first thing affect me,” he said of Jefferson’s fly. “It was an example of trying to be too good, and ending up not so good.”

He was replaced by Greg Booker, also in an unfamiliar late-inning situation. After he retired Kevin McReynolds on a line drive for the second out, Booker walked Johnson, hit Barry Lyons (a .235 hitter) with the bases loaded, allowed another run with a wild pitch, and gave up a two-run single to Rafael Santana to finish it. Booker also threw six straight balls during this sequence.

“We had to use guys who weren’t used to coming in like that, and that happens,” said Bowa. “Once in a while, we aren’t going to have a choice. But with the off-day (today), everything will be back to normal Tuesday.”

With this team, what is normal remains anyone’s guess.

Padre Notes Third baseman Chris Brown, who has a sore elbow and has missed two games, had a pinch-hit single against Roger McDowell in the ninth. If Brown had started Sunday, he would have been only one of two Padre starters who has hit better than .200 against Dwight Gooden. Brown has a .286 average (4 for 14) against Gooden, while Carmelo Martinez entered with a .308 average (4 for 13).

First baseman John Kruk, who was kept awake all Saturday night with back spasms after he strained his lower right back in the seventh inning of Saturday’s game, missed Sunday’s game and could miss a couple more. He tried to take batting practice Sunday morning and the pain was too great. “I told him to forget it,” said batting coach Deacon Jones.

Ed Whitson’s bruised three fingers on his right pitching hand should heal in time for his next scheduled start, Friday at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium against Philadelphia.