San Diego @ Los Angeles preview
Dodger Stadium
Last Meeting ( Sep 8, 2010 ) LA Dodgers 0, San Diego 4
The San Diego Padres built a seemingly comfortable first-place lead by playing better than .600 baseball over the first 125 games of the season.
They gave up the lead by playing less than .300 baseball (7-17) over the past 3 1/2 weeks.
It is the final two weeks of the season that will determine whether the Padres are one of the four National League teams enjoying the postseason, beginning with Tuesday night’s road game against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The Padres (83-66) trail the San Francisco Giants by a half game in the NL West with 13 contests remaining - and every one of those games will pack the utmost importance.
San Diego led the division by 6 1/2 games after beating the Arizona Diamondbacks on Aug. 15. The Padres then lost 10 straight games and the Giants and Colorado Rockies took advantage of the swoon to make the division a three-team race.
Playing the Dodgers should be a good thing for the Padres. Los Angeles is 15 games below .500 since the All-Star break and has won just six of its last 21 contests.
The Padres had their final off-day of the regular season on Monday and it goes without saying they could use a sweep of the series with a Los Angeles team playing out the string.
Clayton Richard starts the opener for San Diego. The left-hander is unbeaten against the Dodgers in four career starts (3-0, 3.57 ERA) and is 2-0 against Los Angeles this season.
But Richard hasn’t won since Aug. 24 – two days before the Padres’ freefall began – and is coming off a horrendous outing against Colorado in which he gave up a career-worst eight earned runs and 11 hits in three innings.
Richard is 12-8 with a 3.70 ERA.
Chad Billingsley takes the ball for Los Angeles and he has just a 2-5 record over his last nine starts, even though his ERA has dropped from 4.00 to 3.55 during that span.
Billingsley is 2-2 with a 2.55 ERA in four starts against the Padres this season and has a 10-6 career mark with a tidy 2.68 ERA.
Billingsley (11-10) lost to San Francisco in his last outing despite allowing just one run and six hits in seven innings.
A hot-hitting Padre to watch in this series is outfielder Will Venable, who had four straight multi-hit games against the St. Louis Cardinals while going 10-for-15.
Venable is batting .354 in September and his modest home run total of 12 is second best on the hitting-challenged Padres.
First baseman Adrian Gonzalez leads San Diego with 29 homers and 97 RBIs, but has never homered in 45 career at-bats against Billingsley.
Dodgers third baseman Casey Blake is 1-for-21 over his last five games with 12 strikeouts. Blake has fanned 22 times in 55 September at-bats.
Los Angeles center fielder Matt Kemp is 5-for-10 lifetime against Richard.