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Tue. Final: Padres 13, Brewers 6By Todd WelterNext game: Wednesday, Aug. 12 vs. San Diego By the time Adrian Gonzalez picked up his sixth hit, most of the Miller Park crowd had cleared out. Those that stayed were kind enough to give him a nice round of applause. Just shows the type of game the paid attendance had to watch as the San Diego Padres routed the Milwaukee Brewers 13-6. Gonzalez registered a career-high, club-record six hits. He added two runs and three-RBI's to his career day. His effort was part of 22 hits the Padres (48-66) pounded out which was a season-high for the NL West bottom dwellers. "22 hits, it wasn't a good night," Brewers manager Ken Macha thought. According to Macha, the next two weeks is supposed to tell the tale of how the Brewers' playoff hopes will go. Well, thanks to bad defense and poor pitching, the tale has a scary start. In this tale, Chase Headley and Will Venable joined Gonzalez in playing the roles of the big bad wolves for blowing down the Brewers' pitching. Headley added three hits and a run. Venable hit his third home run this season off Brewers pitching and drove in two runs in a six-run, sixth-inning Padres rally. The Brewers committed two errors in that dreadful inning which led to a couple of those runs. The first error came on Jason Kendall's throwing error to third on pitcher Clayton Richard's sacrifice bunt attempt. Kendall never set his feet and threw the ball completely off target as the ball landed in left field. The other error came when Headley hit a line drive off Casey McGehee's glove and went into left field. The Padres ended up sending 11 hitters to the plate in the inning and scored all those runs despite just four hits. "If I can keep us close there and get Gonzalez [out], it changes the game," Mitch Stetter commented on his inability to get an out in his relief stint that inning. The mistakes and bad pitching continued in the seventh inning when the Padres added three more runs. Gonzalez picked up his fifth hit that inning with a RBI-single and Jesus Colome's wild pitch allowed a run to score. "For five innings, we had a great ballgame going," Macha felt. "Bring the bullpen in and the game gets out of hand." Colome left the game in the eighth inning with a bruised right pinkie finger after being struck by Everth Cabrera's line drive. The Brewers offense did not muster much of a response thanks to a solid outing by Richard. Richard got a little rattled to start the game as he was tagged for two runs in the first two innings thanks to Mike Cameron's solo blast and a RBI-single by Felipe Lopez. Lopez drew some boos in the fifth inning though for misplaying a single by Gonzalez. Gonzalez hit a roller up the gut but Lopez did not make much of an effort to field it as he instead watched it roll into center field. Lopez has been battling a hamstring problem but according to Macha, the hamstring problem was not to blame. "He was disturbed he didn't get it," Macha explained. Gonzalez eventually scored that inning which put Richard in position for the win. Richard settled down to retire 10 of the next 11 batters he faced after the second inning. Bill Hall finally tagged him for a two-run blast in the sixth. Richard picked up his second win in a Padres uniform since joining the team on July 31st when he was part of a trade that sent former Cy Young winner, Jake Peavy to the Chicago White Sox. Braden Looper (10-6) took the loss as he lasted just five innings. He gave up seven runs--only five were earned--and 11 hits. He was tagged for two home runs in the second inning, walked one and struck out four. "I'm a ground ball pitcher and a lot of those ground balls just seemed to be finding the places where our guys weren't at," Looper described. The Brewers did add two more runs in the ninth. The slide out of the playoff race continues as the Brewers (56-58) are now 10-14 since the All-Star break and 27-36 since June 1. Notes |
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