SD 3, WSH 8: Padres don't bounce back today

Where's that Big Game James Shields fellow that's supposed to be eating up all of these innings for us during the regular season? Let's invite that guy to start a game sometime. Today's series opener against the Nationals started off as a great back-and-forth. It eventually blew wide open after Shield was pelted with a few come-back pitches, and when a terrible miscall voided a third out and lead to a grand slam.

Sheildsy stuck in it for a good 5 and something innings. He ended up walking four and giving up eight hits, and as his pitch count climbed the runs started trickling in. The first two came from a 2-run home run given up to Wilson Ramos in the second inning. In the third and fifth inning, Yunel Escobar and Ian Desmond both earned an RBI-double. By the time Shields was out of it, the Gnats were sitting on a 4-2 lead.

The Friars weren't sitting quietly. Especially Jedd Gyorko, who had himself a hell of a game coming in on a 5-game hitting streak. The first thing Jedd did when he came up to bat was belt out a 2-run home run, his 9th HR of the season. He followed that up with another home run, now his 10th, giving the Pads all 3 of their runs for the night.

Even though the Gyorkstore kept the Friars in the game, it wasn't enough to surmount the National's four. Certainly not after another abysmal call by the out-dated system of human umpires. In the sixth inning, with Marc Rzepczynski working relief and two out and one on, Bryce Harper drilled a ball into the dirt in front of home plate which would ground to first, recording the third out of the inning. The umpire crew, however, felt that this narrative wasn't befitting of the Great Bryce Harper. They ruled that it hit Harper's foot, making it a dead and foul ball.

The call was made to replace Rzepczynski with Bud Norris. Norris would end up losing Yunel Escobar on a full count, loading the bases. After throwing two straight balls to Ryan Zimmerman, he'd give up the nail-in-the-coffin grand slam. An inning that should have been over two batters ago turned into four runs, which turned into a Padres loss.

So no .500 yet. But we'll hope that not every game has the life of it sucked out by a blown-call resulting in something as harmful to the ERA as that. Tyson Ross will go toe-to-toe with Gio Gonzalez, and the Friars and the Nats will scrap it out for game two.

Welcome Hoot1969 and Montay23! Thanks for joining the game thread on a fine Tuesday evening.