'Bout Damn Time

Vicente Padilla gets a little love from his bats at last, and picks up his first win of the season in a 4-1 decision over Randy Johnson and the Diamondbacks. Always satisfying to beat a Hall of Famer.

And Bowa finally splits the lefties! The Abreu-Burrell-Thome configuration probably is just a fluke stemming from Johnson's unholy powers over lefty hitters, but maybe Bowa will just choose not to mess with a winning formula and send them out that way again tomorrow. It seems as likely, or not, as any other rationale he might stumble upon for making a move... he did resort to Dumb Managerial Twitch Number Two, using Cormier as a lefty specialist then calling on Worrell for the righthanded hitter. Then he brought in Wagner to "save" a three-run lead. Jerome Holtzman might have been a wonderful guy, but he inadvertantly caused a lot of baseball thinkers a lot of sleepless nights with his gimmicky little stat.