SAN DIEGO _ Chris Paddack was looking for a comeback and was for the first time facing a team for the second time.
As he warmed up before the first inning, a song by Johnny Cash, which Paddack chose, played throughout Petco Park.
It was about the second coming _ the four beasts, thunder, a white horse.
Then the glaring 23-year-old rookie, the man with the black glove, got back to throwing strikes, early and often.
Other than delivering two of them a little too fat in the third inning, Paddack accomplished what he wanted in his first start since his worst start.
After six innings in which he allowed five hits and a run and struck out seven, Paddack was lifted for a pinch-hitter. He was one out away from being a possible hard-luck loser (or at least having no chance to be credited with a win) when Greg Garcia singled and Franmil Reyes homered to give the Padres a 2-1 lead they held to the end.
Paddack (4-2) stayed at Dodger Stadium late last Tuesday, even into Wednesday morning, after the Dodgers had roughed him up, scoring six runs (three earned) in Paddack's 4 2/3 innings. It was the most runs, most hits (five) and fewest strikeouts (three) Paddack had put up in any of his eight major league starts.
Later, in the visitors' clubhouse, he wrote down some things, as is his habit. He tried to not leave until he had let the loss go.
"I told myself my next outing is probably my most important one because not only does it reset me," he said this week, "but it's also the first time I've faced a team twice in my career."
After a night of restless sleep, he got back to work.
His fastball command had failed him in L.A. That had bled into an errant, ineffective change-up. Just two of the nine curveballs he threw found the strike zone. He threw just 13 first-pitch strikes to the 22 batters he faced.
Monday, he was back to being the pitcher who entered the game as the major league leader in first-pitch strike percentage (73.3), getting up 0-1 on 19 of the 23 Diamondbacks he faced en route to his fifth quality start of the season.
Paddack, who had allowed the Diamondbacks a run on three hits in 5 1/3 innings April 12 in Phoenix, got through Monday's first inning on 10 pitches, which included three-pitch strikeouts for the first and third outs. His second inning took one more pitch and got the same number of strikeouts.
To that point, he had thrown four balls and pinned his fastball mostly to the edges of the strike zone. The Diamondbacks were off-balance enough, it seemed, that Paddack didn't pay for the few pitches he'd thrown down the middle.
In the third, he paid for his lack of precision.
Nick Ahmed led off by lining a single that caromed off Paddack's glove. As the ball bounced into right field, a frustrated Paddack momentarily knelt by the mound. He may have been equally upset at his misfortune as he was at the missed location on a belt-high fastball.
He left another fastball at that height for the next batter, Carson Kelly. The 3-1 pitch _ Paddack's only three-ball count Monday _ caught the thin part of Kelly's bat but was hit well enough to float to the right-field grass.
There were still runners at the corners after Eric Hosmer fielded pitcher Luke Weaver's bunt and threw out Kelly at second. Jarrod Dyson's grounder to second base allowed Ahmed to score.
Paddack threw 22 pitches in the third and got through his final three innings with 39 more.
But Weaver entered the bottom of the sixth having retired eight straight batters after allowing just a third-inning single by Austin Hedges. Weaver got the first two batters of the sixth, including Austin Allen, who pinch-hit for Paddack.
Then Garcia lined a single to right field, and Reyes hit the next pitch 422 feet on a line to right-center field.
Paddack, who entered the game with a 1.99 ERA, the sixth-lowest of any qualifying major league starter this season and lowest of any Padres pitcher after eight career starts, pushed that mark down to 1.93 on Monday.
.jpg?w=600)
