“A large, heavy object belted the Padres upside the head last night,” writes the San Diego Union-Tribune’s Tom Krasovic, employing the tired rhetoric of those who’d have you believe Dodgers starter David Wells is anything but a finely tuned physical specimen.
Wells had a 14.04 ERA in his final four starts with the Padres. His revival, fueled perhaps by a three-week respite that came after his release, is making the Padres look like failed evaluators. Or tightwads. The club owed Wells a bonus of $176,470 per start when it released him.
Wells has said he told the Padres he would go on the disabled list to restore his left shoulder, which had required a cortisone shot. That doesn’t quite square with what the Padres brass recalls from the lefty, who to them seemed eager to stay in the rotation.
As Wells’ would-be replacements have flopped, the Padres have reprised their critical mistake of 2004, when they failed to produce an adequate replacement for No. 5 starter Ismael Valdez after trading him in July.
To Greg Maddux, the outcome last night was all about Wells, who blasted a double to right-center and looped a Gwynn-like single to left field.
œThose might have been the two best at-bats against me of the night, Maddux said. œI’m just glad he hit ’em and it wasn’t a real hitter, or they would have gone 20 rows into the seats.
There’s no shortage of things to gripe about in Baltimore (of the baseball variety, anyway), but it’s kind goofy for The Sun to publish ticket-holder complaints about Miggy, Brian Roberts, Melvin Mora and Ramon Hernandez taking Thursday night off when the result was a 3-0 win for the Orioles over John Lackey and the Angels.