News
Latos leads rookie barrage in victory
Righty tosses seven strong innings; Blanks homers
By Corey Brock / MLB.com
08/04/09 1:56 AM ET
SAN DIEGO -- There figures to be plenty of sticky situations for 21-year-old Mat Latos as he navigates his way through the first summer of his Major League career, though up until Monday, the Padres pitcher had deftly avoided anything so troublesome.Finally, though, in the fourth start of his career, Latos found himself looking at a bases-loaded dilemma with no outs in the first inning before he had to break a sweat, let alone wonder how he got into such a predicament.
"That is not the way I wanted to start ... not with Garret Anderson and Brian McCann coming up," Latos said.
But Latos, who started the season at low Class A Fort Wayne, didn't buckle or fold in the inning, escaping by allowing just one run, which went a long ways toward deciding the Padres' 4-2 victory over the Braves before a crowd of 20,423 at PETCO Park.
Latos (3-1) settled down after a rocky start and got plenty of help from fellow rookies Kyle Blanks (solo home run), Will Venable (three hits) and Everth Cabrera (two stolen bases to set up a run) as the Padres won for the sixth time in their past seven games.
"We've got a lot of rookies," Padres manager Bud Black said, tongue-in-cheek, when asked about how well several of the 20-something players on the roster are performing.
Of course, the reason the Padres (44-63) are playing so many rookies is due to the team having fallen well out of the National League West race and with the second-half of the season serving as what amounts to a 2010 audition for many players.
Without a doubt, Latos has a spot in the Padres' plans for the future. He allowed two runs over the first two innings and then retired 13 of the next 14 hitters he faced, mixing in a changeup more than he had during his previous three starts as well as a slider.
"I thought his changeup was more effective in the middle innings. He limited his pitches tonight more than he did in his previous win," said Black, noting Latos used 94 pitches over seven innings.
All told, Latos allowed two runs on six hits with three strikeouts and two walks.
He also got a little help from his defense to thwart two potentially dangerous threats by the Braves (53-53), none bigger than in that first inning when Nate McLouth, Martin Prado and Chipper Jones reached on consecutive singles to open the game.
But Latos held his ground, getting McCann on a fly ball to center field that produced a run and then getting Anderson to chase a ball up in the strike zone that Dave Eckstein chased after and caught in short right field before firing home to nab Prado, who tried to tag up and score on the play.
"I got in a little on McCann and Garret Anderson to chase it up on his hands," Latos said. "That was a great play by Eck."
Then in the seventh inning, with two runners on and two outs, pinch-hitter Greg Norton hit a ball down the right-field line that Venable flagged down, diving to make the catch that ended the inning.
"The play of the game was Norton's line-drive pinch-hit, and that may win us the game right there," Braves manager Bobby Cox said. "They were playing him on the right-field line for some reason, I don't know.
"That's what it looked like to me. He scalded that ball. It was a bullet. If that ball falls in, for sure we're tied. And maybe we go ahead with McLouth up next."
There were other contributions, of course, from the rookies, as Blanks blasted a ball over the wall in center field and well into the sandbox, a place seldom visited by right-handed batters. Venable had three hits and is hitting .476 in his past five games.
Then there's Cabrera, the speedy shortstop, who with the Padres taking a 3-2 lead into the seventh inning, singled, stole second and then third base before scoring an insurance run as pinch-hitter Oscar Salazar chopped a ball into left field.
Corey Brock is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
