Start Number 30 for Number 36

Tonight, Greg Maddux pitches against his old team (the Padres) for the second time in a week.

When he was traded to the Dodgers in mid-August, I criticized the decision to have his first start come against the Phillies. I had three reasons:

(1) It came on two days' extra rest, which can make a sinker-baller's pitching arm "too strong" and give his pitches less movement.

(2) It meant he was pitching against the same team twice in a row. One of the reasons pitchers' performances generally decline in their second and third times through the lineup is that the more pitches the hitters see, the better read they get on the pitcher. Familiarity breeds extra-base hits, especially against a pitcher whose fastball maxes out in the mid-80s.

(3) The game was at Citizens Bank Park, a hitters' park and a tough place for Maddux's second debut with the Dodgers.

Maddux started that game brilliantly, allowing only one of the first eleven batters to reach (on an infield hit) and even managing to erase that runner on a double play. But then things started unraveling, starting with Pat Burrell's impressive ten-pitch walk. (Maddux had retired the first eleven batters on 28 pitches!) He pitched better than the box score suggested (seven earned runs in 5.2 innings, three of which came on his worst, and final, pitch), but the game, unfortunately, played out much as I had suspected.

The Dodgers have done it again, sort of. They didn't want Maddux pitching against the Arizona Diamondbacks, the only National League team he can't seem to beat. (He has a winning record against every other NL team--he does have a losing record against some AL teams, but the sample set from interleague play is small (19-13 overall)--yet he has a staggering 3-11 record against the Diamondbacks.) However, the worst of that has come at Chase Field, where he's 1-7 (yesterday's game was at Dodger Stadium), he's gone 2-2 against them the last two seasons, and the bottom line is he doesn't need to be coddled.

But they opted to flip-flop him with the talented left-hander Clayton Kershaw, and the 20-year-old phenom didn't have a good game last night. Three earned runs is fine, but 92 pitches in 4.0 innings isn't, and the bullpen was forced to throw the final five. Fortunately, the relievers were up to the task, the Dodgers' offense kicked into gear, and the Diamondbacks did their part by making errors in two crucial situations. The Dodgers won their eighth in a row and now lead the NL West by 1.5 games--not too shabby for a team that was 4.5 games out of first a mere eight games ago.

What about tonight? I still have some of the same concerns (pitching on two days' extra rest, facing the same team twice in a row), but there are important differences. Petco Park is a pitchers' park (and very familiar to Maddux, whose ERA is an outstanding 2.62 in the 86 innings he's pitched there this season), the Phillies are contenders in the NL East while the Padres have the worst record in the majors, and Maddux's mound opponent (Cha Seung Baek) gave up seven earned runs in 3.2 innings against the Dodgers just last week.

However, the Padres have been a decent team of late. They've only lost one of their last four series (a sweep by the Dodgers), and yesterday they scored ten runs against the Brewers, a very good ballclub that leads the NL Wild Card race by a four-game margin. Moreover, Chris Young was only four outs shy of the first perfect game(!) in Padres' franchise history. With Young watching from the bench, that might not seem relevant to tonight's contest, but such games give even a .385 team a little swagger, and the Padres' bullpen comes in well-rested, having thrown but a single inning in the last two days.

I just hate being wrong--one of my many character flaws--but I hated being right about Maddux's start against the Phillies even more. I really don't have a strong sense either way about tonight's game. Even if I did think Maddux and the Dodgers were going to win I wouldn't say so, because despite having a pretty logical mind, I'm insane when it comes to baseball and my favorite player. Hell, I yell instructions to the little men inside my television set before almost every pitch and, as irrational as I know it is, there's a part of me that believes they can hear me. And I'm quite indignant at them for listening so infrequently.

Incidentally, Maddux now wears number 36, before which he wore number 30, before which he wore number 36. But he'll always be number 31 to me.

UPDATE (9/9/08, 4:40 pm): I now know how to make updates!