Padre Notebook : Jones--in Down Cycle--Has Bowa Up in Arms

It was going to happen. As sure as there is a certain 23-year-old, red-haired, baby-faced pitcher on the Padres, it was going to happen.

The only surprise was it took all of 19 days.

Tuesday, Manager Larry Bowa grabbed his first handful of hair.

He rubbed his first handful of face.

He stared at, kicked at and scuffed through his first mound of dirt.

And then he did it. Nearly three weeks after the Padres first reported to training camp, he finally did it.

He muttered, “Oh Jimmy .”

The Padres’ precocious pitcher, Jimmy Jones, who runs in and out of Bowa’s heart as if he were blood, is this season’s first Padre on the outs. Tuesday afternoon, after entering the game with a 3-0 lead, he allowed five runs in two innings in a 6-5 exhibition loss to the Seattle Mariners.

It wasn’t the runs; it wasn’t even the loss. It was the style.

In his second inning of work, Jones walked the first three batters he faced. Three straight. The first three.

Imagine, say, opening night, Houston, bottom of the second inning . . .

“You can’t have that, not the first three hitters, no way,” said Bowa, who may actually have been considering Jones as the opening-day starter after he threw three near-perfect innings in the exhibition opener against the Angels last week.

“Let’s don’t talk Jimmy Jones, let’s talk everybody,”’ Bowa said. “You got Joe Schmo out there, a starter, comes in and walks three straight guys right away. . . . That just does not happen much in the big leagues.

“I can’t understand Jimmy, just can’t understand him. The last time out may have been the best I’ve seen him pitch. He was just pinpointing it. Today . . . I don’t know what he was thinking.”

Whatever it was, it certainly made the Padre infielders’ thoughts wander. Immediately after the three walks, with the bases loaded, Mariner Jim Presley hit a double-play grounder to Mike Brumley at third.

Brumley caught the ball, then appeared stunned. He acted as if he had forgotten how many were on base, how many outs there were, the day, the time . . .

He looked at home plate, then third, then second. No big deal, except he was still holding the ball. By the time he decided to throw to first, he was late, and two runs had scored.

Dave Valle then lined a ball to left. Now it was Randell Byers’ turn to be surprised. The ball skipped under his glove for a second error, and two more scored.

“People talk about the errors. Hey, after all those walks, those fielders were on their heels,” Bowa said. “They were lucky they even saw the ball. They were lucky they weren’t asleep.”

It got so bad, Jones was pulled out two innings short of his scheduled four innings of work. It wasn’t because of the walks, it was because he had already thrown four innings’ worth of pitches--55.

By way of comparison, in five innings of a “B”-squad game Tuesday, Greg Booker threw 62 pitches.

“I really wanted to get Jimmy at least four innings, just like Booker, but we couldn’t,” Bowa said. “Why, I don’t know. It’s just as confusing to me as everybody else.”

Everybody, perhaps, except for Jones. Last season, when he would throw a two-hitter one night and not find his way out of the third inning the next, when Bowa would alternately praise and criticize, the only constant was Jones’ demeanor.

He was always calm. He never showed anger or hurt or confusion.

He finished the year 9-7 with a 4.14 ERA, with more walks (54) than strikeouts (51), but with no visible scars.

Tuesday it was the same.

“Today’s problems were just with those three hitters,” Jones said. “Other than that, I think I did my job. I got the ground balls when I had to.

“For those three hitters, I just wasn’t in the groove. Maybe I was rushing. And I hate doing it. I hate walking guys like that.”

He paused. “But I was lucky. It was a spring game. It didn’t count.”

Said Bowa, who will let pitching coach Pat Dobson talk with Jones today: “I’m sure Jimmy is not doing it on purpose. There’s got to be something.”

According to Dobson, that something could be one simple pitch.

“If you can’t find anything mechanical, then we’ll look at the psychological, but not yet,” Dobson said. “I think it’s his curveball. He doesn’t have a good curveball this spring. He’s just got that good fastball.

“If you just have the one pitch, what are you going to do? You figure the only way to fool the hitters is to throw it in different spots. You try to be too picky, too fine. And you miss.”

Dobson ran to the mound after Jones had walked the first two hitters and had gone to three balls on power-hitting Ken Phelps.

Dobson said he told Jones: “Look it, what’s the worst that can happen? Phelps hits a home run and you’re even, you start from scratch. Big deal. Chances are, he won’t hit a home run, he will hit it at somebody. So please, let him hit it! “

The next pitch was another fastball. Ball four.

“How much clearer can I get?” Dobson later asked. “I don’t know what he was thinking.”

“Yeah,” said Jones, “maybe I need a better curve. But again, I just walked the three guys. After that, I was fine.”

Padre Notes

Tony Gwynn played in his first game since he received a cortisone shot in his injured index finger and announced that the shot didn’t work. “The finger still locks on me,” said Gwynn, who went 1 for 2 with an RBI after missing two games. “Nothing more I can do.” Manager Larry Bowa said he remains unworried: “Tony has told me he can play with it, so that’s what I’ve got to think.” Gwynn hit .370 last season, although he hurt the finger in June.