Braves’ Glavine Handcuffs Padres

Padre starter Andy Benes, sick with the flu, couldn’t sleep Friday night. He grabbed a bite to eat, walked around the house for a while, played with the dog and still wasn’t tired.

He wound up sitting wide-eyed in the family room, flicking through the cable stations, and found himself watching Game 5 of the 1984 World Series between the Detroit Tigers and Padres.

“Can you believe it, of all things to watch, that game was on?” Benes said. “I guess it was a bad omen.”

The Padres, who haven’t been to a World Series since that game, lost once again Saturday, 5-1, to the Atlanta Braves in front of a sellout crowd of 54,046 at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

It was the fifth defeat in the past seven games for the Padres (29-26), and their visions of returning to the playoffs are becoming as murky as Los Angeles Police Chief Darryl Gates’ plans to leave office.

The Padres, who were limited to a season-low two hits off Atlanta starter Tom Glavine (9-3), knew their offense couldn’t rescue them all season. Now, for the first time in nearly six weeks, their offense has abandoned them.

In eight games since the Pittsburgh Pirates left town, the Padres are batting a mere .187 with one home run. They have scored more than two runs in only two of their last eight games and have gone 56 innings without a home run.

“There’s an old axiom that says good pitching will always shut down good hitting,” Padre right fielder Tony Gwynn said. “Unfortunately for us, we’re seeing a lot of that.

“You get 56,000 people coming here here thinking the Fab Four will put 15 hits on the board. No, it doesn’t always work like that. We didn’t hit nothing.”

Glavine shut down not only the Padres’ top four hitters but prevented the top six hitters in the lineup from collecting a single hit. He retired 21 of the last 22 batters and did not allow a hit after the second inning.

“That’s the best-pitched ball game against us all year,” said Jim Snyder, Padre acting manager. “When a guy pitches like that, there’s not much you can do.”

Said Padre third baseman Gary Sheffield: “We had been swinging the bats good, but we couldn’t count on that all year. We knew we were going to run through some tough times sooner or later.

“We can’t complain about it. Pout about it. Or anything else.”

Simply, the Padres they will go only as far as their pitching allows. The Padres’ 3.80 ERA is the worst of any team in the National League West, and no one has surrendered more than their 510 hits.

The Padres have yielded an ERA of 3.80 or higher seven times in their franchise history. The sobering fact is that during those years, the Padres’ average record was 63-99, with no more than 74 victories in a season.

“In this division,” Gwynn said, “you can’t just have one component and expect to win. It won’t work. That’s why when people were saying it’s a three-team race, and leaving out Atlanta and L.A., I knew they were crazy.

“You look at Atlanta, and with that pitching staff, bullpen and offense, they can be scary. If those guys get hot, they can beat anybody. I don’t mean just in our league, but in all of baseball.”

Benes (5-5), who has lost seven pounds with the flu, never had a chance Saturday. He was so sick that he vomited three times between innings. But although he surrendered 12 hits, he allowed only three runs in eight innings.

Any hopes of a Padre comeback, however, were dashed when Atlanta put the game away in the ninth with a two-run inning off reliever Randy Myers. Used in a mop-up role for only the second time this season, Myers gave up three hits and watched his ERA soar to 6.43.

It really didn’t matter, with the way Glavine was pitching. Or the way Glavine was hitting.

Atlanta, using some unusual strategy, twice had No. 8 hitter Rafael Belliard lay down sacrifice bunts to bring up Glavine.

What gives?

“We have that much faith in Tommy as a hitter,” Atlanta Manager Bobby Cox said.

Glavine is batting .303 this season--.104 higher than cleanup hitter David Justice.

“I don’t think it’s luck or a fluke,” Glavine said, “I just feel I have a good idea what I’m trying to do up there. I don’t think I’m an easy out.”

Glavine did nothing to disprove the theory in the sixth inning. Greg Olson and Mark Lemke opened the inning with back-to-back singles, and Belliard sacrificed the baserunners to second and third.

Glavine walked to the plate acting as if this was normal strategy. Benes, believing there must be something about Glavine’s bat, pitched him carefully, falling behind on a 3-and-1 count.

Benes threw a fastball over the plate on the next pitch, and Glavine slapped it to right field for a single, driving in Olson for a 3-1 lead.

It was plenty of offense for Glavine, and considering his league-leading 9-3 record, his next start in San Diego might be at the 1992 All-Star Game.

The only time Glavine got himself in trouble the entire night was when he yielded a two-out triple to Jerald Clark in the second inning that rolled underneath the Padre bullpen bench. Glavine had the option of pitching to No. 8 hitter Kurt Stillwell or intentionally walking him to pitch to Benes.

Glavine chose to go with Stillwell. It proved to be a mistake. Stillwell hit a bouncer up the middle that caromed off Glavine’s glove for an infield hit.

It would be the Padres’ final piece of offense.

“What a night,” Benes said, muttering, “what a lousy night.”