View From Some Phillies in the Know: Padres Better Than This

Larry Bowa weighed his words carefully. He didn’t want to sound petty.

But Bowa, the former Padre manager, made it clear that he thought the team that fired him two years ago had no business being under .500 with such a power-laden roster.

As the third-base coach of the Philadelphia Phillies, Bowa spoke with a certain degree of perspective. The Phillies have been as surprising on the positive side as the Padres have been the other way, hustling their way to a 19-14 start while the Padres have staggered along at 16-18.

Typical of the way Bowa’s former and present teams are playing was the series that ended Wednesday at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. The Phillies came back from a first-night beating to win two one-run games, the type inferior teams playing on the road are supposed to lose.

“They’ve got as much talent as anybody in the division,” Bowa said. “There’s no question about it. I said before the season started that it would be between them and Cincinnati, and now they’re 10 games behind the Reds in the loss column.

“They’ve got a good lineup and good pitching. Sure, Jack Clark is out, but they’ve still got Gwynn and Alomar and Carter and Santiago. And even with Show having his problems, they’ve got pitchers like Hurst and Benes and Whitson. I like them.”

Bowa was asked if he had detected anything in the three games here that would provide a clue to the Padres’ disappointing record.

“No, I couldn’t tell,” he said. “Like everyone says, they start slow all the time, but we weren’t that good a team when I was here (1987 and the first two months of 1988).

“I can’t say what’s wrong. The way the Reds are going, though, they’d better get started pretty soon.”

Across the visitors’ locker room, another ex-Padre, outfielder John Kruk, took a shot at Bowa’s successor, Jack McKeon, for a piece of strategy that boomeranged in the seventh inning of Wednesday’s 6-5 Philadelphia victory.

Benito Santiago, hitting .336, was available to bat for Mark Parent, who has a lifetime average of .187, with the bases loaded and two out. McKeon stuck with Parent, who ended the threat by popping out, then put Santiago into the game and had him lead off the eighth, which he did with a single.

“Attaway to get your best RBI man up there,” Kruk said.

Bowa took note of Kruk’s remark but refused to indulge in that sort of thing.

“Listen, Jack’s been successful,” Bowa said. “He’s won more games than I have.”

Kruk was more charitable in his comments about the Padres in general.

“They’ve got a strong team,” he said. “It’s still early, and they’re liable to win 10 or 12 games in a row without trying. Their offense is that strong.

“You’ve got to think the Reds aren’t going to play this way forever. If they do, nobody’s going to catch them anyway.”

Analyses of the Padres’ situation also were offered by the three other members of the Philadelphia chapter of the San Diego Alumni Assn.

Shortstop Dickie Thon, whose brilliant stop of Tony Gwynn’s hot smash created a game-ending double play, joined Kruk in giving encouragement to Padre fans.

“I think the Padres are going to be up there,” Thon said. “They’ve got hitting, they’ve got pitching, they’ve got a good team. They should be winning.”

Randy Ready, who is playing the same handy-man role that he played with the Padres, stopped short of putting the Padres in the same class as the Reds.

“I don’t think anybody stacks up with Cincinnati,” he said. “Plus Cincinnati’s bullpen is probably the best in baseball. The thing about the Padres is that they’re so inconsistent. We’ve been more consistent than they have.”

Finally, outfielder/first baseman Carmelo Martinez, whose home run was the game-winner for the Phillies Tuesday night, painted a picture that could best be described as bittersweet.

“The Padres are as good as Cincinnati,” Martinez said. “They’ve got players with more experience. With the moves they made over the winter, they should be at the top.

“But they’ve got to get their act together. We were too late the last two years, and I think it’s going to happen again.