“Just didn’t get my free hand on the ball. Outfielder hits the cut man, cut man throws a one-hopper to me. Couldn’t have drawn it up any better. I just couldn’t get my bare hand on the ball.”
R.A. Dickey was the hard luck loser as the Padres defeated the Mets by a score of 3-2 last night at Petco Field.
Things were going perfectly for Dickey as he held the Padres hitless until Yonder Alonso singled with one out in the fifth inning. The Padres manufactured a run in the bottom of the sixth when Everth Cabrera walked, was bunted over to second, stole third and finally scored on a sac fly by Chris Denorfia. That tied the game at 1-1.
However the back-breaker in this contest came in the seventh when Carlos Quentin who had singled scored on a Yonder Alonso double. The throw from Ronny Cedeno to the plate beat Quentin who barreled into Josh Thole was unable to hold onto the ball as the Padres scored the tie-breaking run. Simply put, Thole misplayed it all the way and was so worried about being hit he failed to secure the ball in his glove with his other hand.
The Padres went on to win the game and deny R.A. Dickey his 15th win of the season. Instead he gets tagged with the loss, just his thrid of the season. He allowed three runs, two earned in seven innings on four hits and struck out nine.
“It stings a little bit because we should have won that game”, Dickey said after the game. “We have to win games like this. We have to compete to have a shot at working our way back into this thing. I didn’t execute a pitch or two, but we had some funny plays too. Regardless, it’s a game that I think everybody in here thought we should have won.”
Thole, who was probably thinking about that concussion he suffered earlier this season, was charged with an error on that play at the plate.
The only run of the game for the Mets came in the fourth inning when after a David Wright walk, Scott Hairston singled to put runners on first and second with nobody out. Ike Davis and Jason Bay both fail to deliver with pop flys until Ronny Cedeno broke through with a single to score Wright to put the Mets up 1-0 at the time.
Ruben Tejada and Ronny Cedeno each had a pair of hits as the Mets had nine base-knocks in the game compared to just four hits for the Padres.
Jeremy Hefner (1-4, 5.52 ERA) will try and even the series tonight at 8:35 PM and will oppose right-hander Edinson Volquez (7-7, 3.51).
