Friday night's 16-12 comeback win for the Padres was amazing. Saturday night's game in Denver was amazing, too, but for very different reasons.
Three Friars were ejected by erratic home plate umpire Bill Welke, including starting pitcher Matt Strahm (who was not even the night's starting pitcher) in a 14-8 Rockies win at Coors Field.
Friars starter Eric Lauer's nightmare run in Colorado continued. Lauer coughed up five runs on 10 hits in just 2.2 innings. His career ERA at Coors Field is just about 20.00 and that's not good. The guy who came in after him was not good either.
Robbie Erlin was touched up for six runs on six hits in 2.1 innings thanks in large part to a grand slam by Ian Desmond that put the Rockies in front 11-4 in the 5th inning and that was the second-most interesting thing that happened in the inning.
In the top of the 5th Manny Machado didn't like Welke's strike zone (both teams barked about it during the game) and got an extremely quick ejection, prompting Machado ... who had two hits and had scored two runs already ... to unload with a few words not fit for print.
An inning later Strahm and Green were tossed, presumably for continuing to give Welke the business for his truly awful "performance" interpreting the strike zone. I don't say that as a homer. Welke was atrocious from even an analytically unbiased view.
But the silver lining in this game was again rookie shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. The kid was supposed to get a scheduled day off but came in to replace Machado. He immediately put his stamp on the night.
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Tatis singled in both his at-bats, took 2nd base on a ball in the dirt that most guys wouldn't even try to run on and made a sensational diving catch of a line drive in the hole at shortstop.
San Diego will try to salvage a series split on Sunday when Nick Margevicious gets the start against fellow rookie Peter Lambert.
