Diamondbacks 1, Padres 2: Nineteen-Ninety-Hate

It was 1998 night in San Diego tonight. You might think that meant that we were really into Boy Bands again, or e-mailing lame intern jokes to our co-workers. You would be wrong. It was the night the Padres honored their 1998 Got-Swept-In-The-World-Series team. It was also the year of the D'Backs birth. The throwback unis of the Padres weren't the only 1998 thing about this game, as the D'Backs hit like an expansion team against a soft-tossing lefty.

There was a promising start to the game. Gerardo Parra lead off with a double, an he eventually scored from a Cody Ross sacrifice fly to make it 1-0 Diamondbacks. That Parra double? That's the last hit you're going to see from the D'Backs for awhile, so strap in, it's about to get real. After that Eric Stults, who is envious of Jamie Moyer's velocity, went into shutdown mode after that and only allowed two more baserunners all game. It was really depressing.

Adding to that depression was the fact that Trevor Cahill was having a fairly good start. In the 5.2 innings he pitched, he struck out ten Padres, which tied a career high for him. However, he had trouble putting batters away at times, as there were a number of occasions where Padres hitters were able to foul off balls on two-strike counts to get his pitch count up.

He ran into trouble in sixth. Alexi Amarista walked to leadoff the inning. Cahill then hit Chase Headley to make it first and second with no outs. I should point out that after hitting Headley, the Padres didn't flip out and go after one of our guys, because they seemed smart enough to know that Cahill hitting San Diego's best hitter in that situation wasn't something he would do on purpose, as that would make his life harder in a close game. So props to the Padres for not being like some division rival cousins I could name in that regard.

Anyway, Carlos Quentin followed up with a cheap infield single to load the bases with no outs. All told, that inning wasn't as bad as it could have been. Trevor would proceed to strike out Kyle Blanks and Wil Venable and was one strike away from getting out of the inning unscathed, but Logan Forsythe blooped a high sinker into center that scored two runs to make it 2-1 Padres.

The Diamondbacks would go meekly into the night. A Willie Bloomquist single in the ninth was the only other hit in the game for them. Eric Stults threw a one run, two hit complete game against the Diamondbacks.... Let that sink in...

Well, at least the shutout streak is still going.