To Padres, Bip Looks Bigger Each Day : Roberts Doubles In Tying Runs, Scores the Winner Against Phillies

First it was Tim Flannery. Then Luis Salazar and Marvell Wynne. Saturday night, it was the Philadelphia Phillies.

The Bip Roberts hit list is growing daily.

The smallest man on the team (5-7, 160) continued to play a big role for the Padres, who scored three runs in the eighth to defeat the Phillies, 3-2, in front of 23,161 in San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

Bip blipped a two-out, two-run double in the eighth inning to lift the Padres into a 2-2 tie, and Roberto Alomar followed with a single that scored Roberts with the winning run.

The victory, their eighth in nine games, put the Padres (70-65) five games over .500 for the first time this season. It also kept them seven games behind first-place San Francisco and moved them to within two of third-place Houston.

Bruce Hurst (13-9), making his first start since Aug. 22, was the winner. Mark Davis pitched the ninth to earn his league-leading 33rd save.

Roberts’ double bounded off the glove of left fielder Bob Dernier, who was backpedaling and veering to his right. The ball was hit so hard that Dernier was lucky to get a glove on it.

It came after Benito Santiago and Mike Pagliarulo had singled with one out. Padre Manager Jack McKeon sent Joey Cora in to run for Pagliarulo, and then he had Carmelo Martinez bat for Hurst.

Martinez struck out swinging on a full count, but Santiago and Cora were successful on a double steal.

Up stepped Roberts.

“If I would have known he was going to hit it that hard, I wouldn’t have run them,” McKeon said, smiling.

Said Roberts: “Hey, I was just hoping it got over his head, because we’re trying to get back into the pennant race. You can always say ‘What have you done for me lately?’ and this is definitely my biggest hit of the season.”

It has been quite a season for Roberts, who has played six positions and is batting .290. Flannery announced that he will retire at the end of the season in part because Roberts has seized the infield utility role Flannery previously played.

Roberts has expanded it to include a few outfield positions as well, and his capability there allowed the Padres to trade Salazar, who played infield and outfield, and Wynne, an outfielder, to the Cubs earlier this week to get pitcher Calvin Schiraldi and outfielder Darrin Jackson.

“We made some changes, and we were able to make those changes because we have a guy like Bip doing the job on a consistent basis,” McKeon said. “The guys’ values lessened because Bip is doing such a good job.”

Said Roberts: “I don’t want all that on me. In baseball, there is a business part of the game, and you have to live with it.”

Roberts has started 14 games in left, one in center, 11 in right, four at second, 12 at shortstop and 16 at third base. Saturday, he started in left and moved to third for the ninth inning.

It’s not an easy job, as Roberts can attest.

“My arm is starting to bother me,” he said earlier this week. “But that’s one of the things that happens when you play a lot of positions. You make a lot of different throws.”

He was zero for three when he stepped up to bat in the eighth Saturday but was able to bounce back and help give the Padres and Hurst a victory both needed badly.

Hurst made his first start since Aug. 22. The Padres lost to Philadelphia that day, 4-2, and Hurst lasted just three innings before suffering a groin injury. He missed his next start but said he was ready to go Saturday.

Aside from the first inning, when he allowed two runs and five hits, he pitched well. During one stretch from the third through the seventh innings, he retired 12 batters in a row.

From the second through eighth innings, he held the Phillies to just two hits. His final line: two runs, seven hits, three walks and six strikeouts.

“My groin felt great, my shoulder felt great,” said Hurst, 31. “Ten days off does a lot of good for an old guy.”

It took awhile for the Padres to get started, and it wasn’t the first time this season Hurst and the Padres had trouble with Ken Howell. On the day Hurst injured his groin, Howell was the opposing pitcher. He went seven innings, allowing just one run and one hit.

Saturday, he lasted into the eighth before the Padres finally came to life.

Howell baffled the Padres for seven innings, retiring the first 12 batters in a row and then coasting through the next three innings, allowing just a Pagliarulo single in the sixth.

It was nothing new for Howell, who came into the game limiting the opposition to a .208 batting average, third lowest in the league. He held Tony Gwynn to zero for four to drop his average to .341, still leading the National League.

The Phillies got to Hurst early. Hurst struck out Lenny Dykstra to start the game, but then gave up consecutive singles to Tommy Herr, Randy Ready and Ricky Jordan. And the three used the entire field. Herr’s hit went to left, Ready’s to center and Jordan’s down the right field line. Herr scored on Jordan’s single, and Ready stopped at second.

It looked as if Hurst would get out of it with just one Phillie run when the next batter, Von Hayes, grounded to second. But shortstop Garry Templeton’s relay on the attempted double play was in the dirt and skipped past Jack Clark at first. Ready scored on the overthrow, and it was 2-0.

No Padre reached base until the fifth, and even then they still didn’t have a hit. They produced base-runners thanks to the fielding blunders of third baseman Charlie Hayes. Clark led off the inning with a chopper that Hayes dropped. Howell got Chris James to ground into a double play on the next pitch, but Templeton followed with a hard grounder that went right past Hayes for a second error.

It didn’t hurt the Phillies, though. Howell struck out Benito Santiago for the second consecutive time, and that ended the inning.

It wasn’t Hayes’ night. In the sixth, he led off with your not-so-basic 5-6-3 groundout. The ball was hit to the right of a diving Pagliarulo, but it was close enough for Pagliarulo to get a glove on. The ball skidded away from him and went directly to Templeton, who fired to first in time to beat Hayes by two steps.

Padre Notes

Padre Manager Jack McKeon said Calvin Schiraldi will “probably” start Wednesday in Houston.