Game Thread: 08/05 Padres vs. Mets

The series now at 1-1, Jason Marquis will head to the mound and try to lead us to a series victory in today's rubber match against the Mets. In his 12 starts as a Padre, Marquis has gone 4-6 and, prior to his last start, strung together three wins in a row. He had a rough outing in his last start, against the Reds in Cincinnati. There, he gave up five runs in the third inning alone, and seven runs altogether. Those runs came on eight hits, including three home runs, and a couple of walks. He managed to last 6 1/3 innings, but the team wasn't able to bounce back from his mistakes. Still, after he settled down, he was able to put away batters much better. The key for a win today will be consistency on the mound. Marquis is good enough to keep our Padres in games, so he just needs to make sure he settles down early and doesn't put himself in situations where the Mets can put up crooked numbers against him.

And of course our offense will have to give him something to work with. They will face off against another rookie after falling to Jeremy Hefner last night. Like Hefner, Matt Harvey will make his third start of the season against our Padres. He has already gotten his first major league win under his belt, putting up a phenomenal outing against the Diamondbacks in his major league debut in July. He struck out 11 batters in 5 1/3 shutout innings, holding the Dbacks to just three hits and three walks. And despite being tagged with the loss his last time out, he pitched well in that start too, giving up two earned runs (three runs total) on four hits while striking out seven in his six innings of work against the Giants. Today we'll see if his success will continue here at Petco Park or if our Friars will give him some trouble and get their first series win since taking 2 of 3 from the Rockies two weeks ago.

#Padres vs. @mets 8/5 lineup twitter.com/Padres/status/…

— San Diego Padres (@Padres) August 5, 2012

GO FRIARS!! KEEP THE FAITH!!