San Diego Padres fall out of first place with loss to St Louis Cardinals
Jon Garland pitched seven good innings for the San Diego Padres, but Adam Wainwright pitched eight better ones for the St. Louis Cardinals to defeat the Padres 4-1.
The Padres offence had no answer for Cardinals starting pitcher Wainwright who retired the first nine Padres he faced. San Diego’s first two base runners came in the fourth inning thanks to a pair of walks by Wainwright.
Wainwright ended up retiring the side in five of the eight innings he pitched.
San Diego threatened for the first time in the sixth inning when they got runners on first and second with only one out, but Adrian Gonzalez lined out and former Cardinal Ryan Ludwick grounded out to end the inning.
The Padres best threat came in the eighth inning. With runners at second and third, and two outs, Adrian Gonzalez hit a single to left field to get the Padres on the board. However Ryan Ludwick popped out next leaving two runners stranded.
“We definitely can’t hang our heads,” Ryan Ludwick said. “We got a good pitching effort, they got a good pitching effort and we had opportunities. We just didn’t get it done when we had those opportunities.”
The loss was No. 12 out of the last 13 games the Padres have had with the Cardinals, and only the second time this season they have lost a series to a team from the NL Central.
With the loss the Padres fell to 83-66 on the season and fell a half game behind the San Francisco Giants for the NL West division lead. They are also two and a half games behind the Atlanta braves for the NL wild card.
The Padres will take Monday off before travelling to Los Angeles to start a three-game series with the Dodgers. Scheduled to take the mound in game one on Tuesday for the Padres is Clayton Richard; Chad Billinglsey is set to do so for the Dodgers.
“You can’t go home and get comfortable and relax,” Garland said. “We’ve got to win every game, that’s the way we’ve got to look at it.”
After leading the NL West division for most of the season, the Padres find themselves in a fight for the division and their play-off lives with less than two weeks left in the regular season. It could very well come down to the end of the season with the Padres
facing off with the Giants in the final three games.
Tags: