Jake Peavy Was Unhittable, Trevor Hoffman Blew it

The Padres right-hander dominated the Diamondbacks on Wednesday night, striking out 16 over seven scoreless innings, tying his career best for K's. Peavy is an outright stud, no question about it. He's won both a league ERA title, and strikeout title. From the second inning to the fourth, Peavy struck out nine straight Arizona hitters, fooling them with his nasty breaking stuff, and blowing his heater by 'em. If it weren't for a walk to Eric Byrnes on a questionable full count call by the umpire, Peavy would have tied Tom Seaver's record of striking out 10 consecutive batters in a game. But after 117 pitches, Peavy was lifted for Scott Linebrink who gave up a run in the eighth. Trevor Hoffman came in to close the 2-1 game and wound up surrendering a two out two-run walk off game winning home run to Stephen Drew (his first HR of the year). Despite the blown game, Peavy still backed his closer afterwards:

"I love Hoffy to death, and he knows I'm in his corner. I don't want anybody saving games for me other than No. 51."

That's pretty stand-up of Peavy to say, even though he had to be fuming that the game was lost. But you know what? He suffered from the same problem about which I cautioned when I was pumping Jake for the Cy Young; his pitch count was too high. I guess that's the downside of needing at least three pitches to get batters out, you can't last too long in the ballgame. One could say the no decision makes up for his last start when Peavy gave up five runs over five and a third innings, and got the win due to offensive support. Regardless, Wednesday night's outing proved once again that there aren't many pitchers in the world more who can dominate more than Jake Peavy when he's on.

Previously at FanHouse:
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