With all the talk of building a new football stadium in the East Village we might as well get used to seeing a pair of touchdowns on the scoreboard.
The Padres lost to the Dodgers 15-0 on Opening day at Petco Park. This one got away from the Friars early and they could never get it back.
"Opening Day is special. Nobody wants to come out and lay an egg on Opening Day and get beat 15-0," said Padres manager Andy Green after the franchise's worst Opening Day loss ever. "It still is one of 162 (games) and over the course of 162 every single team in baseball gets smoked like that so you have to keep it in perspective."
Green makes a good point. The Padres aren't going to have to face Clayton Kershaw every night. The Dodgers' starting pitcher doesn’t need much help from his offense. In his previous five career starts on Opening Day the L.A. ace piled up a 1.14 earned run average, better than Hall of Famers Bob Feller and Jim Palmer.
The only man in the modern era with a better Opening Day ERA (minimum five starts) is Rick Mahler, who pitched to a 0.92 in his career starting the season. So when Kershaw got two runs in the first inning and another in the third you had a good idea the Padres were in trouble.
Kershaw threw 7.0 shutout innings, allowing just one hit with nine strikeouts. Padres starting pitcher Tyson Ross, on the other hand, did not bring his best stuff to his first Opening Day outing. Ross finished with a nightmare stat line of 5.1, 9 hits, 8 runs, 7 earned runs, BB, 5 K, 2 HBP, WP. Basically he was unable to locate any of his pitches and it hurt him right off the bat.
In the first inning the Dodgers got two runs on a pair of doubles and a single by Adrian Gonzalez. The Eastlake High alum and former Padres All-Star continued tormenting his home-town team with a trio of RBI knocks.
Ross was finally pulled from the game in the 6th inning. He hit Yasiel Puig with a pitch then allowed four straight hits, the last one by Kershaw, prompting new manager Andy Green to go get him.
The Dodgers got three more runs in the 7th inning off Luis Perdomo. The Rule 5 draftee who had never pitched above Single-A ball was kept on the roster out of Spring Training. His introduction to MLB was harsh. Perdomo threw one-plus innings, allowing six runs on six hits. The bad news is his ERA is now 54.00. The good news is if he throws a scoreless inning in his next outing it will be cut in half to 27.00.
It was not exactly the kind of start the majority of the 44,317 fans at Petco Park were hoping for. Usually Dodgers fans come south to invade the East Village but this time the crowd was decidedly pro-Padres (until about the 6th inning, at least).
The Padres can get their first win of the year, and Green’s first as a big league manager, on Tuesday at home. James Shields gets the start against Dodgers left-hander Scott Kazmir.
