Padres Wonder ‘What If?’ After Benes Shuts Out Dodgers Again

When the question came up Sunday afternoon, Padre Manager Jack McKeon winced, closed his eyes and waited for the pain to subside.

He has avoided even thinking about it. What good does it do now, he tells himself? All it does is cause aggravation and heartache. Besides, the damage already is done.

Now, just moments after the Padres’ 1-0 victory Sunday afternoon over the Dodgers, the topic again arose.

Considering that the Padres (86-70)--who have won 24 of their past 30 games, and 26 of 33--are still five games behind the San Francisco Giants with just six remaining, would they still be in this predicament if pitcher Andy Benes had been with the Padres all season?

Or, what would have happened if Benes had just joined the team in June, when starter Eric Show suffered a season-ending back injury?

McKeon, who often has wondered this these past weeks, said almost in a whisper: “I don’t know what we’d have done had we had him all year. I really don’t. But I sure wish I could have had the chance to find out.

“Especially in light of what’s happened now. There’s no telling where we’d be.”

Andy Benes, the kid who was supposed to be back home in Evansville, Ind., resting for the winter, won his sixth consecutive decision Sunday, outpitching 1988 Cy Young winner Orel Hershiser for the second consecutive time.

Benes, who did not allow his first hit until Hershiser’s single with one out in the sixth, yielded just four hits in 7 2/3 innings. He struck out seven and allowed just two men to reach second. And when he tired in the eighth, on came Mark Davis, who used one pitch to get out of a two-on, two-out jam and finished the game for his major league-leading 42nd save.

“Every time he goes out there,” McKeon said of Benes, “he’s in complete control of the game. I’ve never seen a guy come up from our organization and dominate like he has.”

Benes, if you recall, is the one who triggered the Padres’ pennant surge on the night of Aug. 23 with his first major league victory, and has not let the Padres down since. The Padres are 7-0 in his past seven starts, in which Benes has a 2.22 ERA.

Just what kind of confidence does McKeon have in him?

“If we made the playoffs and played against Chicago,” McKeon said, “I wouldn’t hesitate to start him the first game.”

So, uh, just how much does it bother you now the way Benes was handled this season?

“It makes me sick,” McKeon said.

Can you blame him?

Benes, the No. 1 pick in the 1988 June free-agent draft, wasn’t even invited to the Padre major league camp. McKeon protested, but it was a lost cause.

“It would be too much pressure on the kid.”

“We got to build a solid foundation for him.”

“The media would be too much on him.”

“He’s got to learn to pitch first.”

The Padre minor league department had all of the reasons why Benes didn’t belong in camp.

Instead of watching Benes develop, McKeon got to see plenty of other pitchers. He saw Matt Maysey. He saw Ricky Bones. He saw Joe Bitker. He saw Terry Gilmore. He saw Joe Lynch. He saw . . .

Oh, and Benes? He was pitching against something like the San Diego State Vegas junior-varsity team. Once, he got excited when he found out he was going to pitch against the Oakland Athletics in camp, only to find out it was their “B” squad.

When camp broke, Benes was off to Wichita, Kan., home of the Padres’ double-A team. Benes figured his stay would last only a month, particularly after he won his first four starts with a 0.44 ERA.

Surprise. Three months later, Benes still was in Wichita. It wasn’t until July 8 when he finally was promoted . . . to triple-A Las Vegas.

“I can’t argue with what happened,” Benes said, “but I really felt like after five or six starts, I got bored. I wasn’t concentrating as much. I regressed.”

Well, at about the time Benes was just making his way to Las Vegas, the Padres learned that Show was going to be finished for the season and that Walt Terrell (5-13) wasn’t going to improve.

So they threw Don Schulze in the rotation for four starts. Greg Harris was given seven starts. Even Pat Clements started a game.

All the while, the guy McKeon wanted was Benes.

“But our minor league people kept saying he wasn’t ready, he wasn’t ready,” McKeon said. “That’s the thing that got me.

“Why not take a chance? You don’t know what’s going to happen unless you take a chance. I took a chance (while managing Kansas City) with Dennis Leonard. I took a chance with Al Cowens. I took a chance with Frank White.

“Finally, I just told them, ‘Hey, bring him up, will you? If it doesn’t work out, I’ll take the heat. I want him up here.’ ”

Benes arrived on Aug. 8 without a changeup, a curveball that he couldn’t throw for strikes and a fastball that was losing its zip.

In 15 days, after working with Padre pitching coach Pat Dobson, Benes was pitching as well as anyone on the staff.

Just ask the Dodgers what they think of him. They have yet to score off him in 15 innings, obtaining just six hits and batting .125 against Benes.

“He’s the kind of pitcher that moves the ball around in and out,” second baseman Willie Randolph said. “If you’re not guessing right on, you’re in trouble. He’s a pretty poised young kid.”

Benes’ poise, perhaps, is the biggest surprise of all. Rookies, particularly those 22 years old, aren’t expected to fare well in pressure situations.

But here he is, dropped in the middle of a pennant race, facing Orel Hershiser, with 37,679 fans watching, the largest crowd he’s ever pitched in front of.

“I tried to block it out,” Benes said, “but every once in a while I’d sneak a peek and take a look around. It was pretty awesome.”

The only frightful aspect of Benes’ performance for the Padres was that he might have to leave in midst of a scoreless tie. While Benes was mowing down the Dodgers, the Padres kept putting runners on base against Hershiser, but they couldn’t get anyone across the plate.

Until the seventh.

After Benes opened the inning by bouncing out, Bip Roberts singled to left. Roberto Alomar followed with a single to center. Tony Gwynn hit a sacrifice fly to center. And just like that, the Padres had the only run they needed.

It all all that Hershiser (14-15) could stomach. He pulled himself out of the game after the seventh and soon became the losing pitcher for the eighth consecutive time, and the fourth time against the Padres. In his past 50 innings, the Dodgers have scored a whopping three runs for him.

“I don’t think we’ll ever go through a season again where we can say we beat them four times,” McKeon said. “ We’re thankful we had a guy like Benes out there to match him.”

Now, if only the Giants would quit matching the Padres. Although the Padres have gone 11-4 since Sept. 9, they have failed to gain a game in the standings, leaving the Giants’ magic number at two.

“It doesn’t look good does it,” Gwynn said. “All we can do is hope. But I’ve seen strange things happen. Don’t write us off yet.”

Said McKeon: “Miracles do happen.”

And at this point for the Padres, that’s all they have left.

Padre Notes

With all due respect to Houston Astro pitcher Mike Scott, Manager Jack McKeon says that the 1989 Cy Young award belongs to Mark Davis, whose 42 saves is just four shy of the major league record set in 1985 by Dave Righetti of the Yankees. “The best guy should win the Cy Young,” he said, “and I don’t care if it’s a starter or a reliever. And my guy is the best guy. He should win it. He has been the difference in 50% of our wins, and he didn’t have one cheap save all year.” . . . Padre first baseman Jack Clark, who has a baseball-sized lump in his left thigh, was kept out of the lineup Sunday. He suffered the injury while rounding third base in the fifth inning of Saturday’s 7-1 victory over the Dodgers.