Padres : Moreland: Team Should Focus on Little Things

Carmelo Martinez had taken no more than two steps into the clubhouse Sunday, fresh from collecting two hits in the Padres’ 10-4 win over the Milwaukee Brewers, when he was accosted by the loud Southern twang of Keith Moreland.

“Hey, man,” Moreland shouted to Martinez. “You can really hit, you know that?”

“Hey, man,” said Martinez, taken aback, “I’m just watching you.”

Here lately, they all are.

Three weeks into spring training, Moreland, acquired from the Chicago Cubs this winter, finally has begun to leave fingerprints. They’re down in the infield dirt, up on the clubhouse walls. If he’s not careful, they could end up on some young players’ minds.

On Sunday, Moreland had his first big outing as a Padre, knocking in three runs on a groundout and two singles. Afterward, he gave his detailed observations of his new teammates.

He pronounced them talented, but needing more dirty faces and lunch buckets and the kind of basic plays that will lead to a flashy record.

“I’m not going to rip anybody,” said Moreland, “but we have such good young talent, yet they aren’t yet educated on how to play this game. They don’t yet know what it takes to win. They don’t understand that it’s all in the little things.

“When I was coming up, by the time you got to the big leagues, you knew the game. You knew about moving runners. You knew about hitting cut-off men. I don’t think some of today’s kids quite get those things yet.”

What it takes, Moreland showed Sunday, is not homers and spectacular plays.

It is a two-out RBI poke single. It is a one-out RBI single on a high, inside pitch. It is an RBI groundout to third with runners in scoring position.

It is a stolen base on a delayed steal that so fouled up pitcher Chris Bosio (Moreland stole three bases last season and is the slowest man on the team), that Bosio gave up base hits to the next seven batters.

Moreland did all those things, and other Padres followed his example as they collected 20 hits and had their best inning of the spring, a seven-run fourth.

Not because of the seven runs on nine hits. It was the best, by Moreland’s thinking, because it contained two hit-and-run singles. And an RBI on a groundout. And so many Padre baserunners at times that the Brewers couldn’t figure out which base to throw to.

“This is the kind of team we have to be,” said Moreland, the oldest (33) and best-paid ($1.2 million this year) Padre. “The Cardinals made a killing for years doing that. They forced the action. I think they led the league in errors by the opposition. We need to do that.

“We’re not going to hit many balls out of the ballpark. But we do have a lot of speed and a lot of good contact hitters, and we need to take advantage of them.”

He was talking about such guys as catcher Benito Santiago, who executed this season’s prettiest hit-and-run Sunday, lunging for a bad pitch and looping it into right field to score a run and moving another runner into scoring position.

“Blueprint, wasn’t it?” said Manager Larry Bowa.

But for every good play this spring, there has been a Shawn Abner play, which happened Saturday but still had Bowa talking Sunday. In a 3-2 loss to San Francisco, Abner, a rookie outfielder, missed a cut-off man with his throw and allowed Will Clark to jog into second on a single. Clark later scored what proved to be the winning run.

Moreland, who is hitting just .211 but says he’s right on his personal schedule, says those kinds of things cause destruction.

“We aren’t the kind of team that can give away things,” said Moreland, an eight-year veteran. “We can’t give away extra bases. Our guys have got to watch Tony (Gwynn) play the outfield and see where he puts the ball. Or look at me, I’ve gotten paid well, but I’m not a great player. I’ve gotten by on doing those little things, making the throw to keep the double play in order, backing up other outfielders, those things.”

Moreland said some young Padres are trying to hard to make “This Week in Baseball” instead of trying just to win.

‘We have a lot of young kids who just want to make the great plays, and that’s natural, but it’s not right,” said Moreland. “When I dove for that ball in our opening game this spring with California (a single-turned-triple for Chili Davis), I fell prey to that, but I should have known better.

“Make the routine plays.”