Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Spring Training Game 4: Hits, Misses & Foul Tips

Padres 7, Rockies 3, (boxscore)

Hits

Greg Reynolds

Reynolds bounced back solidly from a shaky first spring appearance with three scoreless innings, two hits allowed, and one strikeout. He faced the minimum nine batters and needed only 23 pitches. I'm looking for any glimmer of hope I can with guys like Reynolds and Greg Smith, so hopefully he can build off this outing and attain some consistency moving forward.

Jonathan Herrera

Herrera started a 4-6-3 double play (Renck tweet) that had the San Diego Padres radio broadcast in awe. This kid just never stops impressing every time he steps on the field and he's going to push the issue for playing time at second base.

Troy Tulowitzki

He hit a baseball that, judging by sound, traveled a long damn ways. I love that sound.

Misses

Rafael Betancourt/Matt Reynolds

Sounded like Raffy was hit pretty hard. The triple off Jorge Cantu's bat, plating San Diego's first two runs, sounded especially violent. Ryan Ludwick followed that with an RBI single.

Reynolds had an equally disappointing spring debut, allowing a three-run homer to Will Venable. What concerns you there is Reynolds is being counted on to be the top lefty in the bullpen, and Venable is a left-handed stick. That's an area of concern for a lot of Rockies fans, and today's outing certainly won't ease that discomfort.

That said, both relievers have 30 days to figure out what went wrong.

Foul Tips

San Diego Padres broadcast

This should probably go under misses, since these guys were boring and often annoying, but since it didn't happen on the field and you probably don't care, I'll just list it here.