Padre Notebook : Stats That Were Unexpected--Well, Maybe Not for This Group

There are a few oddities to note after exactly one half of a very odd Padre season (statistics as of 81 games):

Reliever Mark Davis had the same batting average as Tony Gwynn (.250).

Marvell Wynne had three times as many homers (9) as Keith Moreland (3).

Gwynn had committed the same number of errors as Moreland (3).

Roberto Alomar was one of two Padres tied for the team lead in at-bats (258) and was second in games played (66), yet was one of only two Padres who started the season in the minor leagues.

Starting third baseman Chris Brown had missed 34 of 81 games with injury-related problems but had not been on the disabled list once.

Davis, the season-opening set-up reliever, had 15 saves and had finished 32 games. Season-opening stopper Lance McCullers had but six saves and had finished 21 games.

Reliever Davis had more strikeouts (60) than all but one starting pitcher.

Flipping Over the New Manager: If you arrive at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium before the Padres’ 5:10 p.m. batting practice, as a few poor souls insist upon doing, you will catch yet another example of how the players are having a blast under McKeon.

You’ll see 6 or 8 or even 10 of them standing in a circle behind the batting cages, apparently playing volleyball with a baseball, using only their gloved hands to bat the ball among each other.

The game is called “flip.” As fears about safety and fears that players were tearing up the grass behind the plate has virtually eliminated games of pepper, “flip” is becoming the traditional pregame activity for otherwise bored players.

But it has happened just recently in San Diego, because Larry Bowa, the previous manager, never allowed “flip” to be played.

“Never knew why. Just wouldn’t let us,” said Davis, who, with Mark Grant, brought the idea for the game over from San Francisco.

A couple of days after Bowa was fired, the two pitchers and a couple of others absently started playing the game, and McKeon said nothing. Today, almost half the clubhouse has been involved, with players even scheduling starting times.

“It’s a good way to get loose, get warm, stretch out,” Grant said. “It’s also a good way to relax.”

“I ain’t crazy about it,” McKeon said. “I don’t want to see anybody hurt doing it.

“But what the heck, they can’t play pepper anymore. What else is there to do? Why not let them have a little fun?”

With the game apparently here to stay, you should know the rules. The players flip the ball among themselves until somebody flips and misses or just drops it. The only rules are that you cannot hold the ball in the glove, and you cannot flip the ball in a downward direction.

The first man to miss three must sit out and become the judge on controversial flips. After that, somebody is eliminated with each miss until it comes down to the final two.

“And then,” pitcher Greg Booker said, “the guy with the broken sternum is the loser.”

He was smiling, Jack. It’s a joke.

McKeon Story of the Week: A local newspaper reporter covering a recent Padre game was unable to travel downstairs to the clubhouse for McKeon’s postgame news conference because of a cast on his broken right leg.

No problem.

McKeon simply picked up the phone on his desk and phoned the reporter in his press-box seat and supplied him with his own personal news conference.

Fashion Ghouls of the Week: Let this serve as proper warning to all photographers and other gawkers. The socks that Davis wears during pregame warm-ups have the brown stirrups painted on.

“Bought them at a sporting goods shop. Aren’t they neat?” asked Davis, who said the Giants wore those socks as a team a few years ago. “Don’t worry, I won’t try them in a game.”

Who will know?

Davis’ socks are matched in trendiness only by the white T-shirt that reliever Dave Leiper often wears under his uniform shirt. On the shirt’s front is imprinted a photo of Padre backup catcher Mark Parent, with Parent’s name printed in block letters underneath.

“I think it shows the great respect and admiration I have for Mark Parent,” said Leiper, who also collects baseball cards of Marvell Wynne.

Forgotten Pitcher of the Year: Admit it. What’s the first thing you thought when pondering the hiring of McKeon?

Oh, this must mean great things for Greg Booker. The guy is McKeon’s son-in-law, right? Maybe Booker will finally get a chance.

Wrong. In what has become a case of reverse nepotism, Booker has pitched eight times (entering Saturday’s game), or once a week, in the 40 games since McKeon took over. He has allowed runs in only three of those appearances, but it hasn’t mattered, because each time he has entered, the Padres have been getting their brains beaten in.

They lost 6 of those 8 games by a combined score of 50-12. Even in the two games they won while he pitched, he obviously wasn’t brought in with that in mind--on both occasions, he entered when they were trailing, 5-0.

He was never ignored this much even under Bowa, who used him in 17 of his 46 games.

“It’s never been this bad,” Booker said last week. “It’s tough getting confidence when you just go one inning every week or so. I really want to pitch more, and I think that the people in charge would be bothered if I didn’t think like that. I guess I’ll just have to keep waiting and working.”’

McKeon agrees that it all sounds a bit unfair, and says he takes full blame.

“Book is one of a couple of guys I can honestly say I haven’t given much of a chance,” McKeon said. “The problem is, our starting pitchers have been going longer than with the other guy (Bowa), so by the time they are ready to come out, it’s time to go to Davis or McCullers. Book has been caught in the middle there.”

A look at the statistics shows Booker’s problem. Throw out three bad but meaningless games in which he was shelled after the club was already down by five or more runs, and his earned-run average is 2.01, compared to his actual 3.99.

The problem is, of his 22 other appearances, only eight have been in pressure situations (with the team trailing by three or fewer runs). In those situations, he has allowed eight runs in 12 innings for a 6.00 ERA.

So what do the Padres do now? They could trade Booker, but would it be without knowing completely what he can do? They were considering giving him a shot at being a spot starter until Dennis Rasmussen came along from Cincinnati, moving Grant into that role.

McKeon says he knows the answer to this dilemma but doesn’t know how he can transfer it to a lineup card.

“He’s got to pitch more, that’s all there is to it. He can’t stay sharp if he doesn’t pitch,” McKeon said. “Anytime the fans boo a guy like that, they should be booing me; it’s my fault when he’s not sharp.

“But then, I can’t pitch him if there’s not a situation for it. We have to just be patient.”

“I will be. I have to be,” Booker said. “Mentally, if I thought about all this, it would drive me crazy. Because when you don’t pitch much, that’s all you do is think.”

Minor League Stuff: The one hole in the Padres’ upper minors--third base--may be filling itself at Class-A Riverside. The Padres’ third baseman of the future may be 22-year-old Dave Hollins, who through Friday was hitting .306 with 6 homers and 55 RBIs. He was also tied for the club lead with 6 game-winning RBIs. A 1987 sixth-round pick out of the University of South Carolina, Hollins hit .309 for rookie-league Spokane last season.

Perhaps the Padres’ biggest minor-league disappointment so far this year has been Thomas Howard, who was one of their top outfielders during spring training. He has struggled since he recovered from a torn hamstring and was recently sent down from triple-A Las Vegas to double-A Wichita, where he hit .405 in his first 10 games. Howard hit just .251 with no homers and 15 RBIs at Las Vegas. Last year in Wichita, he hit .332 with 14 homers with 60 RBIs. He hit .316 during spring training.

Jack McKeon’s method of anything-it-takes baseball must be trickling down. The Padres’ Riverside team recently scored six runs on just three hits in a 13-6 loss to Stockton.