Crunch Time

Two struggling contenders entered play Wednesday certainly feeling the pressure of holding down first place.  One of the teams, the Atlanta Braves, even lost first the night before to the Philadelphia Phillies.  Trailing by a half-game, the Braves will need to recover well to get it back.  In the West, San Diego endured the longest losing streak ever by a first place team, losing ten in a row.

Being honest, I think both the Padres and Braves will win their respective divisions.  It's hard to read momentum swings like this.  The Phillies usually don't stop winning when they get on a roll, but I think they will this time.  No one gave the Braves more than a week or so in first place when they got it in May and they held it for the entire summer.  The Phillies aren't having a terribly great year by their standards because Ryan Howard is having arguably the worst year of his career, which is still pretty good, and Jimmy Rollins is so-so yet again.  The additions of Placido Polanco and Roy Halladay have been instrumental to getting them to where they are now, but I don't see them winning the division because the Braves will have some the Phillies don't this season.  And that is pride and passion playing in the last year for Bobby Cox, and possibly the last year with Chipper Jones' playing career.  There's no doubt Jones has been as much of a franchise player as anybody over the past 15 years, and although he's out for the season now this could be his last shot at watching one of his teams win big.  The Phillies are only pesky as usual.

The Padres have received fantastic pitching all year long especially out of the bullpen from Mike Adams, Heath Bell, Luke Gregerson, etc.  The Giants are no stranger to strong pitching, with the two-time defending NL Cy Young Award winner Tim Lincecum although he has struggled this year.  So they are somewhat even on the pitching side.  The Padres have fallen victim of inconsistency offensively and they have a lot of hitters hitting for too low of an average.  Adrian Gonzalez is carrying too much of a load on the team's run production, while Wil Venable and Tony Gwynn, Jr. are hitting .223 and .213 respectively and that just isn't good enough to be starting outfielders.  Aaron Rowand and Nate Schierholtz are only hitting .236 and .250 respectively, though.  The Giants have also had problems hitting, these problems have plagued them for most of this decade while Barry Bonds was their only offensive threat and he would be walked constantly.  So, both teams have struggles offensively.

The difference I think here is that the Padres have absolute shutdown pitching.  If the opposing team doesn't have a lead by the 6th, there's no chance.  No Padre pitcher who has appeared in more than 15 games has an ERA over 3.40.  The Padres have only used 18 pitchers this year, eight of which have started a game.  Of those eight, only two (Wade LeBlanc, Kevin Correia) have ERAs over 3.45.  The team has gotten support from the community and although the Giants still beat them in many categories, I think the Padres do too much right especially on the pitching staff to not win.  The fact that San Diego has committed the second least errors can't hurt, either.