Hoffman just smiled.
He’s piled up the most saves in baseball history, reaching 526 after needing only eight pitches in a perfect ninth inning in Thursday’s 3-2 win over the Houston Astros. But it’s the blown saves that occasionally make Hoffman a marked man in his own city, especially now that he’s 40, in the final year of his contract and had offseason elbow surgery.
There were the two blown saves in three games at the end of last season, including that epic 13-inning loss at Colorado on Oct. 1 in the wild-card tiebreaker game.
There was the one late Wednesday night that got the talk shows buzzing. Hoffman allowed four runs in the ninth inning of a 9-6 loss, including Lance Berkman’s three-run home run, and was pulled.
Although he’s a standup guy with the media, he’d rather be in the background.
“It’s a long season,” he said. “We don’t want to continue the overanalyzing of each individual save that comes out. I’ve had a little bit of an up and down thus far, but I’d much rather it just kind of go away.”
The Padres, who got a two-run first-inning homer from Kevin Kouzmanoff, won three of four against the Astros in a season-opening series.
Scott Hairston went 3-for-3 and scored two runs.
Randy Wolf made his Padres debut and right-hander Shawn Chacon made his Astros debut. Neither got a decision.
After the Astros tied it at 2 in the seventh, the Padres went ahead in the bottom. Hairston legged out a triple when his fly ball fell just beyond the reach of Jose Cruz Jr. He scored on Tadahito Iguchi’s single.
