Scott Mystifies Padre Hitters for Astros, 1-0

It was less than two hours, but it was long enough for the Padres to twist. And shout.

Said Tony Gwynn: “No ball in the history of baseball breaks like that ball we saw tonight. No fastball. No changeup. No curve.”

Said Chris Brown to a reporter: “I wish I could have kept your scorebook and you could have taken my place down on the field. Then you could have seen what I seen.”

On Saturday night, in front of 30,641 at the Astrodome, the Padre hitters saw Houston Astro pitcher Mike Scott.

They couldn’t see his split-fingered fastball and certainly couldn’t see his slider. They saw only him, this incredibly ordinary-looking pitcher, giving them extraordinary headaches.

The line on Scott: Nine innings, no runs, four hits, nine strikeouts.

The final score: Astros 1, Padres 0.

The incredible statistic: In 13 career starts against the Padres in the Astrodome, Scott has won 12 times without a loss.

“Even I’m surprised at that,” Scott said afterward. “There’s so much luck involved, I don’t think I could beat a high school team here 12 times without a loss.”

The comparison was particularly appropriate Saturday, as the Padre hitters looked like puppets on long strings. Scott would jerk, the Padres would swing, the ball would pop into the air. Next puppet.

Only five Padres reached base--the fifth on a walk--and only two advanced as far as second.

Gwynn’s 10-game hitting streak? Gone. He lined out to left field and then grounded to second base three consecutive times.

Roberto Alomar’s 10-game hitting streak? See ya. He never even put a ball into play. He struck out three times and walked once.

It was the rookie Alomar’s first look at Scott.

“The ball comes right at the middle of the plate--and then it drops,” Alomar said, shaking his head. “Drops right in the middle of the plate.”

And Saturday night, it dropped right in the middle of Ed Whitson’s gut. The Padre starter--who, on opening night here against Scott, allowed just two runs in seven innings and was still beaten, 6-3--saw it happen again.

This time he allowed just three hits in seven innings. Just three Astro hitters came to the plate in each of the first six innings, and then Whitson allowed back-to-back singles by Gerald Young and Bill Doran in the seventh, followed by an RBI fly by Terry Puhl.

And that was enough. Whitson lost for the third time in the past four starts. On two singles and a flyout.

“There’s nothing to do, there’s nothing to say, I’m tired of getting mad,” Whitson said. “When Mike Scott is on, I don’t care who is hitting. When he’s got control of that ball he’s throwing, he’s tough.”

The operative phrase there--”That ball he’s throwing”--brings up another point.

After such a game against Scott, the first thing a team usually thinks is, well, the man already has one Cy Young on his fireplace, and this year he is 13-3 with a 2.52 ERA and tied for the National League lead with five shutouts.

“You think, oh well, we got tomorrow,” Gwynn said. “You look forward to he-ain’t-pitching-again kind of tomorrow.”

But then the second thing they think is, “That son of a gun, if he put any deeper illegal scuffs in those baseballs, he could sell them again as whiffle balls.”

Although no Padre hitter or pitcher would comment on that--how would you like that split-fingered stuff coming at your head?--Padre pitching coach Pat Dobson echoed the frequent refrain.

“Sure he scuffs the ball, but what are you going to do about it?” Dobson asked.

Like other teams, the Padres are certain that Scott is guilty of tampering. But unlike other teams, they say they have a set of statistics to help their case.

They say Scott’s record against them in the Astrodome--12-0, 1.52 ERA--looks suspicious in comparison to his record against them in San Diego. There, he is 2-7 with a 5.07 ERA.

The Padres note that in Scott’s games in the Astrodome, local ball boys pick up all stray foul balls and throw them to the Astro dugout.

“We never see a ball here, and you can’t do anything about the scuffing unless the umpires catch him in the act,” Dobson said.

In San Diego, with their own ball boys, the Padres see every ball. Thus, they say, Scott is not as likely to scuff the balls there.

Long after most of his teammates had dressed and departed Saturday, Scott sat in his uniform top and gym shorts, sipping on a beer. He heard these charges. He shrugged.

“I don’t even have an answer to something like that anymore,” he said. “I haven’t really heard it in a while, but anymore, I just don’t care.

“Who knows? I know people keep telling me I scuff it.”

Scott said his secret Saturday was, oddly enough, Whitson.

“When you get the other guy pitching so well, you know that if you make a mistake, just one, that’s the game. You concentrate a lot more on making good pitches.”

It was just that kind of pitch that extricated him from his only two trouble spots of the night.

In the second inning, Alomar led off with a walk and went to second on Gwynn’s grounder and to third on Keith Moreland’s flyout. But four pitches later, Benito Santiago struck out, flailing.

In the fifth, John Kruk led off with a single and was similarly moved around, on a groundout (Brown) and a fly (Garry Templeton). Whitson, after attempting a couple of bunts because it was obvious he wasn’t going to hit it any other way, struck out.

“The split-finger is coming, you know it’s coming, and you know it might break out of the strike zone, so you want to lay off it,” Gwynn explained. “But you can’t. You just can’t. It’s so close, you can’t take a chance. You swing, and he gets you.”

Padre Notes

Tim Flannery’s pinch-hit single off Mike Scott with two out in the eighth inning went to waste when pinch-hitter Marvell Wynne struck out. But nonetheless, it made Flannery 4 for his last 7 in pinch-hit appearances after he went 0 for 13 to start the season. “It’s still crazy,” Flannery said of pinch-hitting, shaking his head. “It makes a man crazy and old before his time.” . . . It’s not as if the Padre hitters are always stunned by Scott. Entering the game, Chris Brown had a .348 lifetime average against him, Tony Gwynn was hitting .339, Benito Santiago was hitting .316 and Carmelo Martinez was hitting .333. Brown, Gwynn and Santiago combined to go 0 for 11. Martinez did not play, as Manager Jack McKeon stuck with the left-handed-hitting John Kruk against right-hander Scott. First baseman Keith Moreland, at another position Martinez could have played, had a lifetime average of .233 against Scott and went 1 for 4. . . . For the 11th consecutive game, the Padre pitchers (this time Ed Whitson and Dave Leiper) held the opposition to three earned runs or fewer. But because of weak hitting, the team has gone only 6-5 during that time. Leiper’s one scoreless inning of relief gave the bullpen a 14-inning scoreless streak, with just eight hits during that time.PADRES AT A GLANCE

SEVENTH INNING

Astros--Young singled to center. Doran singled to right, Young taking third. Puhl flied to right, Young scoring. Davis grounded into double play. One run, two hits.