CHICAGO – Randy Wolf said there was “no way to candy coat it.”
“I've got to be better,” said the pitcher, who, after being in command for four innings last night at Wrigley Field didn't retire any of the seven hitters he faced in the fifth.
“I'm not executing when I need to and it's snowballed on me.”
Wolf, of course, was talking about himself. But he could have been talking about the Padres en masse.
SPENCER GREEN / Associated Press
Chicago's Alfonso Soriano circles the bases after two-run homer off Padres starter Randy Wolf.
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For after winning two straight games against Colorado over the weekend, the Padres reverted to the team that had lost 18 of their previous 22 games in a 12-3 loss to the Cubs.
And there was no way of “candy coating” the egg the Padres laid at Wrigley.
“That was a rare game,” Padres manager Bud Black said. “We're in games . . . we don't have many games like that. This one, in the middle part, got away from us.”
In both the fifth and sixth innings, the Cubs batted around. Well, maybe batted is not the perfect word, although the Cubs did have 10 of their 13 hits in the two innings that produced 11 runs.
The Cubs also had five walks in the two innings as Padres pitchers issued a season-high nine walks.
And then there was one particularly embarrassing error.
With the bases loaded and two out in the sixth and the Cubs already holding an 8-2 lead, Mark DeRosa hit a sharp grounder that Kevin Kouzmanoff fielded behind the bag at third.
Rather than throw to second for the force or to first, Kouzmanoff opted to try to beat Aramis Ramirez to the third base bag. The third baseman failed and at the last second fired a bullet across the infield.
But Adrian Gonzalez, thinking the third out had been made at third, had already headed toward the Padres' dugout as the ball sailed over the first base bag. Then Gonzalez was slow in retrieving the ball down the line with three runs scoring on the play.
“That wasn't very smart of me,” said Gonzalez, whose brother Edgar soon would make his major league debut and deliver his first major league hit and RBI.
“I did the worst thing and lost my concentration and assumed the out would be made. (DeRosa) probably would have been safe, but the ball wouldn't have gone into right field.”
Not that the play would have made a difference the way Carlos Zambrano was pitching – and hitting – for the Cubs. Just the same, however, it was embarrassing.
Wolf, meantime, has suffered the same fate – the big inning – in two straight outings and in three of his past four starts.
Last Wednesday night in Atlanta he was in a 2-2 tie going into the bottom of the seventh when he failed to retire any of three hitters he faced and got tagged with all five runs in a 5-2 loss. On April 25 in Arizona, Wolf gave up five runs in the third.
Last night, Wolf took a 2-1 lead into the bottom of the fifth thanks to Jody Gerut's first homer as a Padre. But seven straight Cubs, starting with a double by Zambrano, reached base – five via hits and two on walks.
The big blow was dealt by Alfonso Soriano, who homered on a 1-and-2 pitch immediately after Zambrano doubled, putting the Cubs up for good.
“It's happened two games in a row,” Wolf said. “If I make my pitches in the fifth, I get out of it. But I got into a spot where I wasn't making my pitches. When you get behind and don't locate, it's a recipe for disaster.”
“In every start, there's one inning where they are going to put pressure on you,” Black said. “Wolf's had games where he's pitched out of those jams. Tonight was not the case . . . he couldn't make a pitch to get out of it.”
Bill Center: (619) 293-1851; bill.center@uniontrib.com
