A Wild One in San Diego
It was a wild game in San Diego last night. The Padres scored five runs in the bottom of the 9th to tie the game at six, and then the Pads and the D-Backs played another nine innings, until the D-Backs finally won it in the 18th by scoring three runs of pitcher-of-last-resort, backup shortstop Josh Wilson.
The two teams used a combined 18 different pitchers in the game. The Padres used ten including Wilson.
It strikes me as crazy that you would use a position player at pitcher in a tie game, but I don’t think Bud Black really had a choice. Once the game had gone 9 innings, the four pitchers that Black called upon to pitch innings 10 through 17 (Heath Bell, Edward Mujica, Luke Gregerson and Chad Gaudin, had all pitched at least once the previous two days.
As a result, Black couldn’t reasonably go more than two innings with any of them. He couldn’t use his remaining starters Jake Peavy, Chris Young or Kevin Correia either, without screwing up his rotation big time.
Ultimately, Josh Wilson had to go out and take one for the team. Still, it’s not a situation a team wants to find itself. Sometimes there just aren’t any good options.
