Edinson Volquez threw five hitless innings, but a disastrous sixth inning and a struggling offense put this game squarely in the Dodgers' hands. There's plenty of blame to go around for this loss, though. Will Venable picked up a Golden Sombrero tonight, and Carlos Quentin went 0 for 3 with two strikeouts. On the better side of things, Chase Headley looked a bit better, going 2 for 3 with a walk, and Chris Denorfia flashed the leather again with a run-saving catch in the ninth.
Things were pretty quiet until the top of the fifth inning, when Volquez walked three in a row to load the bases with one out. He managed to get Skip Schumaker to ground into the inning-ending double play, but first base umpire Marty Foster had other ideas. Despite all evidence to the contrary, he called Schumaker safe at first, giving the Dodgers the first run of the game.
Down 1-0, Volquez still had a no-hitter going, but the game quickly unraveled in the sixth. The no-no ended on Adrian Gonzalez's leadoff home run. Then Andre Ethier drew a one-out walk before moving to third on Mark Ellis's single. It looked like the Padres were going to get out of the inning with minimal damage when Juan Uribe struck out, but an error by Pedro Ciriaco allowed two runs and kept the Dodgers going. When Volquez walked Greinke, his inning was done. Brad Boxberger came in to replace him... and promptly gave up an RBI single to Schumaker. Then he walked Yasiel Puig before finally wrapping up the inning by striking out Gonzalez.
Boxberger came out again for the seventh inning and gave up a leadoff homer to Hanley Ramirez before retiring the next three batters. Anthony Bass took over to throw scoreless eighth and ninth innings. The Padres sole run came on a pair of doubles from Yasmani Grandal and Jesus Guzman in the eighth inning. Every other National League West team won today, so the Padres have slipped back to third place, 3.5 games out of first. But don't jump off the bandwagon just yet. There's still plenty of baseball to play.
The hard-throwing Andrew Cashner toes the rubber against Chris Capuano tomorrow at 1:05 PM. Let's get that series win!
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