Padres Follow Bad Form in 9-0 Loss to Giants

Fly ball to deep center field. The Padres’ best player chases it, chases it . . . and crashes into the wall while the ball bounces off the same wall a few feet away. The ball is now rolling across the outfield and the Padres’ best player chases it, grabs it . . . and crashes onto his rear end.

True story. And if this happened to Tony Gwynn Monday, you can guess what happened to the rest of the team.

On this night of the strange and unusual, the only thing that followed recent form was that the Padres once again were walloped into embarrassment.

This time the victor was the West Division-leading San Francisco Giants, who defeated the Padres, 9-0, in front of a paid crowd of 12,161 at Candlestick Park.

And Gwynn’s third-inning gaffe that gave Kevin Mitchell a triple was only one of three of his ordeals.

Before going into details, let’s first put this into warped perspective:

The Padres have now gone 20 innings without a run. They have gone 25 innings without an extra-base hit. Their last 18 hits have all been singles.

Oh yes, they’ve also lost three in a row, which makes tonight’s game here sort of a measuring stick. Only once last year under Manager Jack McKeon did the Padres lose more than three in a row. And that time, they lost just four in a row.

“I wish I knew the formula for that,” McKeon said when asked about resurrecting his motivation techniques. “When I took over last year, we had already played 60 games. This year, it’s different.”

Perhaps McKeon means that in this young season the Padres have yet to understand how bad it feels to play badly, which is the best motivation of all. But trust them, they are learning. Fast.

Take Monday night.

“Stupid, stupid night,” Gwynn said.

The shenanigans didn’t all belong to him, and in fact, even included several Giants. But let’s start with the guy who started it all, Dennis Rasmussen, Padre starting pitcher. Rasmussen, who will celebrate his birthday today, pitched like that birthday will be his 50th.

His first four pitches of the game all avoided the strike zone. No sooner did Brett Butler reach first base with a walk than Robby Thompson singled to left. And no sooner did that happen than Will Clark singled to left to score the other two guys.

Three batters, two runs, game.

“I was asking for trouble when I walked Butler, and after that, everything went wrong,” said Rasmussen, 30 today, who lasted just four innings but had a game’s worth of problems, allowing seven runs on 10 hits. He allowed the Giants to score at least one run in each of his innings, and then they scored in each of reliever Mark Grant’s two innings.

In his last nine innings covering two starts, Rasmussen has allowed 10 runs and 18 hits in just nine innings, giving him a 6.35 ERA to go with his 1-2 record.

And the first inning wasn’t even his worst. Not counting slo-pitch softball, when is the last time you’ve seen five straight balls hit to center field? It happened to Rasmussen in the third, and then, for good measure, two of the first three batters in the fourth also hit shots to center field.

Not that the Giants were locked in on him or anything . . .

“They have been feeling comfortable at the plate, and I should have done something about it, but I didn’t,” Rasmussen said. “I should have pitched inside more, gotten them off the plate. You have to let them know that the inside part is yours. I didn’t do that.”

Rasmussen’s counterpart, Scott Garrelts, was in equally unusual territory. He threw his first complete game since 1986, and only the second shutout in his five-year career. Part of the reason for those low numbers is that in the past he’s also worked as a reliever. But another good reason, these are the stumbling Padres.

“It’s hard for us to play our game offensively when we get behind so fast,” McKeon said. “Some of our guys were finally making good contact tonight (John Kruk had his second hit of the year, while Benito Santiago and Jack Clark each had a hit) but we couldn’t string anything together, and that’s hard when you are always trying to come back.”

And it’s hard when your defense prevents any comeback.

Poor Gwynn, the two-time Gold Glove outfielder allowed a Mitchell drive to the wall to become a triple in the third inning when he misplayed it off the wall and then slipped and fell. An inning later he misplayed another fly by Clark, losing the ball and crashing to the wall and watching Clark triple, this time driving in a run.

And then two batters after the Clark drive, Gwynn let a Candy Maldonado grounder get under his glove for an error while another run scored on the hit. “Just a typical night at Candlestick,” Gwynn said, who finally was removed in the seventh inning. “It was tough soil, I could never get my footing, it was a night of slipping and sliding and crashing everywhere. I misplayed this, I lost that, I could never get my feet.”

The game wound down with both a light and a sentimental moment, both appropriate. Giants’ catcher Kirt Manwaring set some sort of record in the sixth inning when he was hit twice in three pitches. First, Grant plopped him on the shoulder and sent him to first base. One pitch later, Santiago threw to first for a pickoff and hit a diving Manwaring in the leg.

“I won’t even feel those until tomorrow,” Manwaring said bravely. “They can’t get me down.”

Finally, the game ended with Chris Speier making a running catch of a pop foul down the first-base line. Speier was playing first base for the second time in his 19-year career. Like everybody said this spring, this is the year teams will finally be taking the Padres seriously. Padre Notes

The Padres, besides needing a right-handed stopper in the bullpen, could use a right-handed hitter off the bench. Thus, the bosses watched the waiver wire with interest Monday when the name Gary Ward showed up. Outfielder Ward was dropped by the New York Yankees this weekend after hitting .294 with no homers and one RBI in eight games. After spending a week on waivers, if nobody picks him up, he becomes a free agent and can be signed and paid just the major league minimum $68,000 with the Yankees forced to pick up the rest of his $675,000 contract. Ward, 35, entered this season with a career .279 batting mark and an average of 11 homers and 52 RBIs a season over 10 years with Minnesota, Texas and most recently the Yankees. Padre Manager Jack McKeon liked Ward when he played for Minnesota from 1979-83. In 1982, Ward hit 28 homers with 91 RBIs, then 19 homers with 88 RBIs the following year. . . . The Padres also could fill their need for a right-handed hitter by bringing up outfielder Gerald Clark from triple-A Las Vegas if pitcher Greg Harris is disabled with his sore left rib cage. The rookie pitcher was told Sunday that he would probably be put on the disabled list, but then Monday he told one Padre coach that he felt fine, and another coach that he was 85%. The Padres now believe that he might be confusing injury for pain, the kind of pain which most pitchers must live with daily. They don’t want to put him on the disabled list until they are certain he cannot pitch with the soreness. McKeon will likely talk with Harris today, and if McKeon is convinced Harris can pitch, he will work him into a game beginning Friday, when the Padres visit Atlanta. He won’t throw him into San Francisco’s cold weather, lest he have a repeat of Harris’ one-batter outing Saturday against Cincinnati, when he walked Eric Davis and then walked off the field in pain. “Right now we’ll just wait,” McKeon said. Said Harris: “I don’t know what’s going on. I feel about the same as I’ve always felt.”