Yasmani Grandal has made an immediate impact for the San Diego Padres and he's only been with the big league club since early June.
The young catcher has helped San Diego to a six-game winning streak and will look for more positive results tonight in the second installment of a four- game series versus the Cincinnati Reds at Petco Park.
Grandal, who doubled leading off the ninth, scored the game-winning run on Everth Cabrera's single for a 2-1 win on Thursday and finished 1-for-4 at the plate. He has four homers and six runs batted in to go along with a .292 average in just seven games this season. Grandal has five extra-base hits in that time.
"We're getting some timely hitting from some of these fresh faces," Padres reliever Huston Street said on the club's website. "We have got some good, young players on this team."
Logan Forsythe clubbed a pinch-hit home run in the bottom of the eighth inning to even the score at 1-1, while Yonder Alonso and Cameron Maybin had two hits apiece for the Padres, who are 9-3 in the past 12 games and recently went 7-3 on a 10-game road trip. San Diego last won seven in a row during an eight-game surge from April 16-24, 2010.
Edinson Volquez got the start for the Padres against his former team and did not record a decision with seven innings of one-run ball and 10 strikeouts. Brad Brach threw a scoreless eighth inning and Street picked up the win -- his second of the season -- with two K's in the ninth.
Padres manager Bud Black was ejected from last night's game in the seventh inning for arguing a close play at first base.
"That was probably the most upset I've been on the baseball field in a while," Black told the team's website. "It's a situation where it kind of changed the game a little bit. First and third with one out, we've been playing well, so you want those calls to go your way."
Kip Wells gets the call for Black's ballclub tonight and will make his third start of the season. Wells lost his Padres' debut on June 26 in a 5-3 loss at Houston, but rebounded in last Sunday's 2-0 victory in Colorado with seven scoreless innings. The veteran Wells is 1-1 with a 1.50 earned run average and will face his former Cincinnati team for the 22nd time.
In 21 career appearances, 19 of which have been starts, against the Reds, the right-hander is just 2-10 with a 4.97 ERA. Wells is 0-5 with a 9.22 ERA in his previous six starts against Cincinnati.
The Reds have hit the skids lately with three straight losses and six in the past nine tries. The losing ways have dropped the club two games behind surprising Pittsburgh in the NL Central and continued with last night's loss.
Mat Latos was aiming for his third straight complete game, but ended up tossing seven shutout innings and striking out eight batters in the no- decision. Latos was facing the Padres for the first time since they traded him to Cincinnati last offseason. Logan Ondrusek was saddled with the loss for permitting the go-ahead run.
"That's another tough loss, We have to start winning those close ball games," Reds manager Dusty Baker said.
Chris Heisey's RBI triple in the second accounted for the lone run for Cincinnati, which had been in first place in the NL Central for 41 straight days and dropped to 3-5 on an 11-game road trip in California. The Reds split a four-game set in San Francisco, then lost two of three in Los Angeles.
Reds starters have produced eight quality starts in a row and now its up to Bronson Arroyo to keep that going. Arroyo is just 1-4 with a 4.92 earned run average in his last 10 starts and has registered back-to-back no-decisions, including a 4-3 loss at the Giants on Sunday. He allowed two runs in six innings that day and is 3-5 overall in 16 starts with a 4.06 ERA.
Arroyo, a right-hander, is 4-7 with a 4.56 ERA in 13 career starts against the Padres.
San Diego and Cincinnati are meeting for the first time since the Reds won four of six matchups a season ago.
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