For Padres, Just Fill in Score: 6-2 : They Drop to Last After Routine Loss, Sweep by Expos

At this point--this low, low point--it is difficult to tell whether the Padres are feeling more sorry for their manager or themselves. Lately, the only thing certain about these newest last-place dwellers is that they don’t so much play as mope.

It happened again Thursday as the Padres wallowed around for nine innings in a third consecutive loss to a team they had beaten three consecutive times two weeks ago. The final score was Montreal Expos 6, Padres 2, and if this is how they show a manager friendship, then embattled Larry Bowa needs no enemies.

While Bowa sat alone in the corner of the dugout, growing more helpless to this madness by the day, the Padres ran themselves out of two innings and fielded themselves out of another.

Finally, trailing, 4-2, entering the last three innings, they played as if they had simply lost all feeling. Perhaps after so many losses--127 in the past eight months of baseball--they have.

“When we get behind,” second baseman Roberto Alomar confirmed, “we die.”

It wasn’t quite the way Bowa wanted to spend the day on which a report was published that quoted Padre sources as saying that he has this nine-game trip to turn the team around or be fired.

During the day, he received no phone calls from Padre management confirming or disputing the report. He has not talked to President Chub Feeney in a week.

“It makes me think there may be something to those reports,” Bowa said glumly. “Then again, maybe they are just testing me. If they are, I think I’ve been cool and calm and passed that test. Now I’m at the point of going bananas.”

The Padres have lost all three games on this trip, the latest after they grabbed a 2-0 lead entering the bottom of the fourth inning but lost it as starter Andy Hawkins gave up two runs in both the fourth and sixth innings.

The game ended in the same way as Wednesday night’s 6-2 loss, when the Padres’ final 11 batters went down without a peep. This time, the last 10 batters made outs, with only three balls leaving the infield.

Bowa said the late-inning problems are the same ones that have plagued this team since he took over after the 1986 season: Management has not supplied him with the proper personnel to score runs and make comebacks.

“What is most disturbing is that last year we saw we were short a home-run hitter and leadoff hitter,” Bowa said after his team’s eighth loss in 10 games. “Here we are at the end of May, and it’s still obvious those are the two areas where we need some work.

“I can’t ask guys to do what they are not capable of; it’s not fair. Yeah, I could ask Johnny Kruk to hit more home runs, and he could try, but he would end up hitting .220. . . . Casey Stengel could manage, and you tell me how he could win with this team.”

Earlier in the day, Bowa openly wondered whether this club’s decision-makers are properly informed when they make their personnel decisions.

“I wish the people upstairs would come down to the field and see it from our perspective,” Bowa said. “I think coaches and managers have a better feel for things on the field than the president.”

Hawkins, who allowed 10 hits in six innings and dropped to 4-4, thinks the problem is something else entirely.

“Me and Tempy (Garry Templeton) were talking the other day, and the remark was made that when this team gets behind, there is no pulse,” Hawkins said. “Where do you think that comes from?

“All I know is, there’s way too much talent on this team to be in last place. Way too much.”

Oh yes. It indeed is now your last-place Padres. As the loss dropped them to 15-30, they fell into the West Division cellar by themselves for the first time this season. They plunged pride-first past a team that began the season with a National League record 10 consecutive losses.

There was a time this season when the Padres would say, “Thank goodness for the Atlanta Braves.” Now it is the Braves, at 14-28, who are saying, “Thank goodness for the San Diego Padres.”

“We stink,” Randy Ready said, becoming the second Padre to use those exact words in the past month.

Whatever they do, they did it Thursday night beginning in the third inning while holding a 1-0 lead. With one out, Hawkins singled to right, and then Dickie Thon followed with a double to deep left.

Hawkins rounded second and headed for third and--surprise--he was being waved home by third base coach Sandy Alomar.

“I never thought I would be going home,” Hawkins said. “I wasn’t even running full-out.”

“My mistake,” admitted Alomar.

Ninety feet later came another mistake. The next batter, Roberto Alomar, forgot to stand behind the plate and direct Hawkins, who didn’t know whether to slide or stand up. So he did a little of both, and a perfect relay from Mitch Webster to Luis Rivera to Nelson Santovenia resulted in a tag out.

“I didn’t know what was going on,” Hawkins said.

With one out, Alomar’s ensuing fly ball would have scored Hawkins, had he stopped at third. Oh well. Instead, it became the third out of the inning.

“In hindsight it was a mistake, but Sandy has been great all year,” Bowa said. “Those things will happen.”

Worried about runs, Bowa began the next inning by placing Kruk in motion after his leadoff single. With Ready, a good contact hitter, at the plate, it was a hit-and-run.

But the Expos guessed right and called a pitchout. Ready couldn’t hit it, and Kruk, saddled with a painful knee injury that he is doing an increasingly poor job of hiding, couldn’t run. He was thrown out by days. And sure enough, when Ready did hit the ball on the next pitch, it was down the left-field line for a double that would have scored Kruk.

“They just guess it right,” Bowa said, shaking his head.

After Hawkins allowed a couple of runs in the fourth on an RBI single by Andres Galarraga and an RBI fly by Luis Rivera, the game was tied. Leave it to the Padres to find a way to finish it off, and in the sixth inning they did, on a leadoff fly ball by Tim Wallach.

As it carried deep to left-center field, both Keith Moreland and Marvell Wynne gave chase. Both thought they had it. When both arrived at the same spot at the wall at the same time, both realized they were wrong.

The ball bounced high off the wall and between their outstretched gloves and bounded back toward the infield. By the time anybody could catch up to it, Wallach was on third. A Galarraga single later, the game was essentially over.

“Anytime a ball gets wall, it’s tough,” Bowa said. “I guess both of them thought they could take a shot at it.”

As the manager’s overall record fell to 80-127, a .387 percentage that places him third-worst among the eight Padre managers who have lasted at least one season, something has certainly hit a wall. And yes, it has gotten tough.

Today the Padres enter Shea Stadium for three games with the league-best New York Mets. Perhaps it is time for Bowa to finally duck.

“I’m going to war, and they’ve got live ammunition,” Bowa said. “I’m using a water gun.”