By Tim Powers
PA SportsTicker Contributing Writer
SAN DIEGO (Ticker) - Greg Maddux pitched six stellar innings
Saturday en route to his 350th career win as the San Diego
Padres snapped a five-game losing streak with a 3-2 victory over
the Colorado Rockies.
A four-time Cy Young Award winner, the 42-year-old Maddux became
the ninth pitcher in major league history to join the 350-win
club. He joins Cy Young, Walter Johnson, Pete Alexander,
Christy Mathewson, Pud Galvin, Warren Spahn, Kid Nichols and
Roger Clemens on the exclusive list.
Maddux (2-3), who failed to reach the milestone in his previous
four starts, yielded an unearned run and three hits with no
walks and one strikeout.
"I was never really too concerned with it, I was just trying to
win," Maddux said. "I don't want to make it out to be nothing,
but it is May, and we haven't been playing that good, and you
really just want to win for the right reasons. We need to start
winning as a team."
The future Hall of Famer also become the third player, along
with Johnson and Clemens, to post 350 wins and 3,000 strikeouts.
The righthander now has 350 wins and 3,299 strikeouts in 23
seasons.
Maddux's only blemish on the night came in the sixth. Willy
Taveras laid down a bunt, and the 17-time Gold Glove winner
skipped his throw to first into right field.
Taveras advanced to third on the play and scored on Omar
Quintanilla's groundout.
After Cla Meredith pitched a perfect seventh, Heath Bell
surrendered an RBI double by Taveras in the eighth. But Trevor
Hoffman closed it out to collect his sixth save.
"It's good to win, basically," Padres manager Bud Black said.
"We need wins, and we need more of them. The guys are, every
day, going about it the right way. We just need more games like
this. We've got to win them."
Adrian Gonzalez provided all the offense Maddux needed in the
fourth inning, when he blasted a three-run homer off Rockies
starter Ubaldo Jimenez (1-3) over the left-center field wall to
give the Padres a 3-0 cushion.
"I was just hoping the ball cleared (left fielder Matt
Holliday's) head," Gonzalez said. "When you hit them low on a
line here, they don't die the way they do when you hit them a
little higher. That is pretty much all I had working to my
advantage and I was able to reach the first row of the seats,
which was nice."
Colorado could do little else in support of Jimenez, who
recorded a career-high 11 strikeouts over 6 2/3 innings. The
24-year-old righthander yielded three runs on five hits and
three walks.
"It was a bad inning," Jimenez said of the fourth. "I tried to
get a ground ball, but he hit the ball really hard. The only
thing is that we didn't win."
Clint Barmes contributed a pair of singles for the Rockies, who
had their three-game winning streak snapped.
"(Maddux) is a master craftsman and he's going to go into the
Hall of Fame," Rockies manager Clint Hurdle said. "He stayed
away from the barrel, he changed speeds, and he got outs. He
was very effective."
San Diego recorded four stolen bases in the contest, the first
time it swiped that many since August 10, 2007.
|
|
|
