San Deigo and Oakland Dig Deep for Today’s Pitching Matchup at LinesMaker

San Deigo and Oakland Dig Deep for Today’s Pitching Matchup

The Padres have cer­tainly made their share of invest­ments in start­ing pitch­ers this sea­son — 12, to be exact, includ­ing Ohlen­dorf on Sat­ur­day. They’ve had to, as four dif­fer­ent starters have landed on the dis­abled list this year, includ­ing three pro­jected as part of the San Diego start­ing rota­tion out of Spring Train­ing (Tim Stauf­fer, Dustin Mose­ley and Cory Lue­bke). They’ve been forced to dip into their bullpen for the likes of Anthony Bass and Andrew Cash­ner, and into free agency, for the likes of Jason Mar­quis, whose stock is ris­ing with just two earned runs yielded in 12 innings of work for the Padres.

Ohlen­dorf hopes to do the same in his first Major League start of 2012. He was 4–3 with a 4.61 ERA for Boston’s Triple-A club prior to land­ing on the Padres ros­ter June 4.

“He’s got some expe­ri­ence,” Padres man­ager Bud Black said. “He’s been around the block and han­dled it well.”

Starters are also in demand for the A’s, who were left scram­bling for some­one to oppose Ohlen­dorf when Bran­don McCarthy’s shoul­der injury flared up ear­lier this week. They set­tled on right-hander Tyson Ross from Triple-A Sacra­mento. This will be Ross’ sec­ond stint in the big leagues this sea­son. He was 2–6 with a 6.51 ERA before being sent down on May 31.

“I think it’s well doc­u­mented that he needs to use more than just one pitch,” A’s man­ager Bob Melvin said. “Needs to be a lit­tle less predictable.”

A’s: So it’s not just Coors
If the 10 runs they scored Fri­day night at home are any indi­ca­tion, the A’s’ offen­sive explo­sion this week was not just due to the friendly air at Coors Field. Com­ing into this week, the A’s were among the Majors’ worst offenses in both bat­ting aver­age and runs scored, but they have caught fire of late, to the tune of 36 runs in their past four games.

“There were days we swung the bat pretty well in Ari­zona too,” Melvin said. “We’re try­ing to feed off the momen­tum that we have offen­sively. A lot of the balls we hit, I feel like, in Col­orado would’ve gone out in any ball­park. I thought we had good at-bats across the board, and again, we’d like to have a lit­tle car­ry­over for that. We expect to.”

Padres: Forsythe to miss a few
Padres infielder Logan Forsythe returned from a lengthy stint on the dis­abled list two weeks ago but is sit­ting again for San Diego with a sore left abdomen. Forsythe, who was a late scratch from the series finale with the Mariners on Thurs­day night, did not play Friday.

“We will give it a cou­ple of days,” Forsythe said. “I think we caught it kind of early. We’re being cau­tious about it.”

Forsythe missed the first 54 games of the sea­son with a bro­ken foot but has been a con­sis­tent pres­ence for the Padres since his return, hit­ting .290 in nine games with five RBIs. One of those came in the bot­tom of the ninth against division-rival San Fran­cisco in the form of a walk-off home run, Forsythe’s first Major League round-tripper.

A nat­ural third base­man, Forsythe had set­tled at sec­ond base. He and short­stop Everth Cabr­era, who is .315 (23 for 73) in his past 21 games, are quickly estab­lish­ing them­selves as an every­day part of the Padres lineup, which had been lack­ing a con­sis­tent double-play com­bi­na­tion for the first two months of the season.

Worth not­ing
• With the win, the A’s won four games in a row for the first time since last Sep­tem­ber. Both teams came into Fri­day night’s opener with a chance to win four in a row after not doing so since 2011.

• Yoe­nis Ces­pedes was not in the lineup for the A’s Fri­day, though Melvin said he would be avail­able as a DH in this weekend’s series. Ces­pedes aggra­vated his left ham­string injury Wednesday.

BetLM's sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice. For more MLB news see: San Deigo and Oak­land dig deep for Today’s pitch­ing matchup.

Related Posts:

• Matt Leinart Plans to Sign With Oak­land Raiders
• Lig­a­ment Tear, Deep Bruise for Chris Young
• Rays’ Start­ing Pitch­ing Depth Scary Good
• Cards Pitch­ing Coach Dave Dun­can Tak­ing Leave of Absence
• MLB Bet­ting Tips: Pitch­ing for the Right Stats

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•