The San Diego Padres will look to keep their winning ways going Wednesday as they play the second of their three-game road series against the Colorado Rockies in Denver.
Manager Craig Stammen’s team won its third straight Tuesday night by blanking the Rockies 1-0. After entering April with a 1-4 mark, the Padres have lost just three times this month and have won 11 of their last 12 games. That streak included a four-game home sweep of the Rockies less than two weeks ago.
Veteran Walker Buehler (1-1, 4.58 ERA) will start on the mound for San Diego. The right-hander shut out the Rockies over six innings and allowed just three hits in a no-decision on April 10.
Last Thursday, he struck out seven Seattle Mariners batters and scattered five hits while allowing two earned runs in five-plus innings, earning his first win of the season in a 5-2 Padres victory.
Buehler, who pitched parts of seven seasons for the Los Angeles Dodgers, is no stranger to Coors Field. Wednesday will mark his 11th start there. He holds a 3-1 record over 12 appearances in the Denver park, but that includes a 5.65 earned-run average.
Brenton Doyle may be the happiest Rockies batter to see Buehler on the mound. The center fielder, who is hitting just .209 this season and has just two hits in his last 14 at-bats, is 3-for-7 against Buehler with a home run.
What will help Stammen and the Padres is a well-rested bullpen backing up the veteran. San Diego had Monday off and needed only three pitchers in Tuesday’s win. Despite the closeness of Tuesday’s game, the Padres gave closer Mason Miller the night off after saving three games in four days last Thursday through Sunday.
The right-hander has pitched 11 1/3 scoreless innings in 11 games this season, with a 27-to-2 strikeout-to-walk ratio.
“Mason will be fine going forward, but we’ve got to take it easy on him,” the Padres skipper said. “We’ve used him a lot over the last week or so, and, you know, he’s not a robot.”
Colorado is expected to start Tomoyuki Sugano (1-1, 3.92). The Japanese righty, 36, is in his second major league season. He also started the April 10 game, his only appearance against the Padres in his brief MLB career. Sugano went six innings and allowed two earned runs on four hits and struck out three in a no-decision.
Last Friday, the Los Angeles Dodgers got to him for five runs on nine hits in just four innings in a 7-1 loss.
Tuesday was the first time the Rockies were shut out this season. While they averaged four runs a game through their first 23 games, they have not hit with a lot of pop. Manager Warren Schaeffer’s team mustered only three singles in 29 at-bats in Tuesday’s loss.
Still, Schaeffer is pleased with the progress the lineup has shown in the past week.
“The last game in Houston, when we started something new and pushing forward with it, it’s been great,” he said. “So, I think that we keep committing to that every single day. It’s a daily commitment to stay in the zone. I think that it’s going to be a really good year offensively.”
-Field Level Media
