Vicente Padilla will get the nod to pitch Game Three of the NLDS on Saturday against the St. Louis Cardinals as manager Joe Torre chose to go with Padilla over the early season ace, Chad Billingsley.
He also was awarded the start over Jon Garland, who possesses post-season experience and even a World Series championship ring, but Padilla has done yeoman’s work in the final months of the season and has earned the right to toe the rubber.
This comes after Padilla joined the Dodgers following a turbulent ending to his stint with the Texas Rangers, where he was seen as somewhat of a clubhouse menace, picking fights whenever he saw fit and leaving his offense to take the punishment for his actions.
Because of these reasons, I was as big of a skeptic as any when the Dodgers announced his signing; I simply figured that the team didn’t need another pitcher to flake out (see: the Jason Schmidt experiment—that one didn’t work out too well).
After all, he hadn’t really shown much for a Rangers’ staff overrun by youngsters.
He did win eight games with Texas early on, but his ERA was 4.92 and he allowed 96 hits in 89.1 innings in the first half of the season.
Yet Padilla developed into a steady hand amidst the patchwork rotation of the Dodgers, going 4-0 with a 3.20 ERA in eight games (seven starts) with Los Angeles.
As a reward for his performance with the NL West-winning Dodgers, the 32-year old Nicaraguan will be making his post-season debut in his 11th full season of service.
He is doing so just two nights after Clayton Kershaw, 21 years old and in his second season, made his entrance into October baseball in dazzling style.
Long ago, Padilla was involved in the trading deadline deal that brought Curt Schilling to the Arizona Diamondbacks from Philadelphia in 2000, leading the bulky right-hander to an All-Star performance in ’02 with the Phillies after winning 10 games in the first half of the season and posting a 3.05 ERA.
But that was as good as it would get for Padilla on the East Coast, as his numbers dwindled over the next three-and-a-half seasons before he was traded to the Rangers following the 2005.
Despite winning 15 games in his first season and 14 games in ’08, Padilla never really settled into a comfort zone in the warm air of Arlington, as he posted a 43-34 record with a dangerously high 4.90 ERA in four seasons.
And Padilla knows that he severed too many ties in his past and stepped on too many toes in Texas, as he has acknowledged the golden opportunity that Torre and general manager Ned Colletti had in him when signing him on Aug. 19.
"This is a second life that I have been given, and I'm grateful for it," Padilla said.
I’ll be the first to admit that I jumped to judgment far too soon on Padilla with the news of his signing.
There was so much uncertainty surrounding his arrival, and the last thing the first-place Dodgers needed was trouble in what is an extremely cohesive clubhouse.
But after watching him work over the past two months in Los Angeles, it becomes clear that Padilla is just a return to the traditional pitcher: he goes after hitters hard in order to establish the inside corner.
Padilla is actually somewhat reminiscent of an old Dodger pitcher, Sal “The Barber” Maglie, who pitched for the Bums back in ’56.
Maglie earned the nickname not because of the 5 o’clock shadow he wore, but for his reputation to come far inside and give batters a “close shave” by buzzing them with inside heater on the chin.
Interestingly enough, Maglie was added in May of ’56 and proved to be a key player on the Dodgers in their stretch run to win the NL pennant—not unlike the way Padilla filled in the void of the rotation this season and pitched brilliantly down the stretch.
What most people don’t remember about Maglie is that he opposed Don Larsen in his famous Game Five perfect game in the ’56 World Series.
Additionally, the Barber not only tossed a no-hitter on Sept. 25 that season, but he also finished second in both the MVP and Cy Young award voting to teammate Don Newcombe.
Although Padilla hasn’t made as dramatic of an impact as Maglie, he has been just as important to the Dodgers’ success in ‘09 as Maglie was 53 years ago for Brooklyn.
But all of his regular season numbers go out the door in Game Three, as he takes on Albert Pujols and the St. Louis lineup in search of securing a Dodgers sweep.
As far as being nervous for his first playoff appearance in a hostile Busch Stadium environment?
"Pressure doesn't help anybody. Why feel pressure?" Padilla said. "You do the work to prepare and you go do the job. You can't control anything but working hard and preparing. You try to do more than you can and things go wrong."
Let’s hope Padilla has done all of his preparation, because with free agency and the possibility of a trip to the NLCS looming, he is about to pitch the most important game of his life.
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