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ATLANTA — Adrian Gonzalez sees no reason to praise any of the pitchers who are shutting down the Padres these days.

“It comes down to, it doesn’t matter who the pitcher is out there,” said Gonzalez, the best hitter on the team. “Could be a young guy or an inexperienced guy or a veteran guy. Doesn’t matter. We’re just not producing.

“As a team, we’re not doing it.”

Gonzalez was speaking after the team’s 16th defeat in the past 20 games, a 5-2 setback at Turner Field Wednesday night.

For the 16th time this season — or 47 percent of the contests — the Padres scored two runs or fewer.

It’s one thing for a Padres offense to go thirsty in April, when cooler weather tends to make Petco Park play as if it were the Deadball Era.

As for the pitching the Padres faced in April, manager Bud Black said he’s never seen better pitching for one month since he entered the majors in 1981.

But the Padres — poor at slugging, dismal at getting on base, prone to striking out and able to combine slow footspeed with bad baserunning — are still doing almost nothing of substance on offense.

Almost every night, they continue to put their starting pitcher on a tightrope. Wednesday night it was Randy Wolf who worked without a safety net, opposite a stout, athletic Braves offense that is averaging more than six runs per home game and has Mark Kotsay as its No. 8 hitter.

When Wolf put a 2-2 game into the home team’s hands by loading the bases with none out in the seventh, Black enlisted Joe Thatcher, he of the 6.75 ERA. Thatcher gave up a single, a sacrifice fly and two more singles.

Ballgame.

“It’s really hard,” Wolf (2-2) said of the team’s struggles. “It’s very difficult. I play the game because I want to win and obviously we’re not doing that. It’s very frustrating.”

If you want to dig really deep, you could chalk up Wednesday night’s striking talent disparity to Braves scouts who are so adept at finding amateurs and the Padres’ two-decades-long underachievement in that area.

From 1988 through 2006, the Padres were the only National League team that never got one 20-home run season from a homegrown player; in that same span, the Braves got 45 seasons of at least 20 homers from nine players.

This Braves lineup, loaded with homegrown producers such as Chipper Jones, Brian McCann and Jeff Francoeur, is so deep that Kotsay was in the No. 8 hole with a .308 batting average. “That’s a good eight-hole baseball player,” Wolf said.

Kotsay, hitting a slider that Wolf said was a good pitch, singled with two outs to put the Braves ahead 2-1 in the second. The Padres’ Tadahito Iguchi tied it in the sixth, scoring on Kevin Kouzmanoff’s double play after leading off with a single, stealing second and reaching third on Gonzalez’s single. The Padres were done scoring, though.

So it was left to Padres pitchers to be perfect from there, and they fell short. Picking on Wolf’s first two pitches of the seventh, the Braves smacked a double and single, and Kotsay came back from 0-2 to earn a walk off Wolf’s 86th pitch.

Enter Thatcher, a left-handed sidewinder. Black would let him face four right-handers. The first, pinch-hitter Greg Norton, hit a go-ahead single off a 1-2 pitch. The Braves pulled away, and right-handers against Thatcher improved their average from .320 to .351.

Black had better luck demoting struggling Jim Edmonds one spot to the sixth hole, but even after Edmonds went 1-for-2 with a walk, Black lifted him for pinch-hitter Callix Crabbe.

Before the game, General Manager Kevin Towers declined comment when asked if the club is planning to release Edmonds. The Braves, meantime, are pleased with Kotsay, whom they acquired cheaply from Oakland last offseason, at a time when the Padres decided to get Edmonds instead.
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Oil company advertising is apparently much more effective than we had originally thought. As gasoline prices creep up towards $4.00 per gallon (already there in Southern California), consumers are still more likely to purchase fuel based on brand over price.

According to NPD Group analyst David Portalatin, consumers cite “product performance” as their justification for buying one particular brand over another. It’s all due to very effective branding and marketing, cites Portalatin. (We’d have to agree, as we’ve yet to meet anyone who can discern a difference between a tank of Chevron or Costco fuel from the driver’s seat.) Now that the massive oil mergers are behind them, the petroleum giants are focusing on selling “quality” to differentiate themselves from the discount fuel stations. As consumers continue to blindly drive towards big brand gasoline, their efforts are apparently working — regardless of cost. Let’s just hope Starbucks doesn’t catch wind of this trend and try a new source of revenue…
[Source Advertising Age, Photo by David McNew, Getty Images]

Whether you call it “premium,” “super unleaded,” or even “high test,” it all means the same thing — the most expensive gasoline at the pump (except maybe diesel). In a somewhat counterproductive trend, the skyrocketing cost of fuel is forcing automobile manufacturers to use smaller and more powerful engines, often with forced-induction. Unfortunately, these engines require higher octane… the distinguishing feature of premium fuel.

Kelley Blue Book has been following the trend and according to their analysis, there were 166 vehicle models that required premium fuel in 2002. This year, that number is up to 282. While some automakers only require premium for their highest performing models, companies like BMW call for premium fuel across their model range.

While there is no advantage to running premium fuel in an engine that doesn’t call for it, you should run the higher octane fuel in a powerplant designed for it (if in doubt, check the owner’s manual, or the inside of the fuel filler door). While nearly every late-model high-performance engine on the road can handle a slightly lower octane rating without damage, don’t skimp when filling up as your fuel economy and horsepower will suffer (yes, it will likely negate any savings at the pump).
[Source: USA Today]