Padres 3, Giants 2: Hosmer and Christian “NLROY” Villanueva take one back for good guys

Wins come easier when your pitching holds it together and your lineup cranks out a couple of timely home runs. Tonight, the Friars let the Giants blow this one in the 9th.

For his first start of May Tyson Ross was dealing, yet again. Across six innings and 102 pitches he only allowed four hits, limited damage to 1 earned run despite 3 walks, and flirted with double digit strikeouts tallying up 9 for the night. The slider was on.

He had Craig Stammen with more iffy relief, Stammen giving up an RBI-double for the game tying run to Buster Posey, Posey scoring Gregor Blanco after Gregor reached on a double — followed by a walk/wild pitch to McCutchen. The Stammen damage was limited to 1 run, so the Padres just had to compete with a pair of runs from the Giants all night.

To start off the scoring in the 1st inning, Christian Villanueva did what Christian Villanueva do: smash his rookie-leading 9th home run of the season deep into the cold empty left field bleachers of AT&T Park.

In the fourth inning, after a leadoff (hustling) triple from Eric Hosmer, Jose Pirela put the ball in play, pushing it into the right side of the infield for a groundout allowing Hosmer to sneak across the plate unchallenged.

After the Giants scored in the 7th, the Friars had to respond before reaching Giants walkoff territory. To do that, Hosmer bit back again with a screaming opposite field home run, bouncing off some more cold empty left-field bleachers.

With only 3 outs to worry about this time, Brad Hand came in and closed out the game with a clean 11 pitches. The Padres bounce back from their ugly late-inning loss with a late-inning win, and will close out the road series in San Francisco with noon game tomorrow.