Peterson Again Falls Victim to Pittsburgh : Baseball: Pitcher keeps Padres close, but Pirates pull out 3-1 victory after Padres blow chance in seventh.

SAN DIEGO —  Of all the baseball joints in the world, the Pittsburgh Pirates had to walk into this one.

It’s bad enough that they defeated the Padres again Tuesday night, 3-1, in front of 14,697 in San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. And it’s bad enough that they have won seven of their past eight games in San Diego.

But this time, the Pirates stuck it to the Padres worse than usual, stringing them along through eight innings before dropping them with two runs in the ninth.

Reliever Craig Lefferts (0-3) allowed a single to Jose Lind, a double to Orlando Merced, and singles to Jay Bell and Lloyd McClendon in the fateful ninth. Bell’s single drove home Lind and Merced with the winning runs.

Count starting pitcher Adam Peterson--who allowed only one run in five innings--among the most miserable Padres. He’s had enough trouble with Pittsburgh in the past 11 days to last a career. Not that there is a problem between he and Pittsburgh, but . . .

Peterson was returning to the Padre pitching rotation Tuesday after missing two starts because of tenderness in the back of his rotator cuff. The second of those came two weekends ago in Pittsburgh.

That alone is frustrating enough for a guy who has never spent a full season in the majors and is still attempting to prove he belongs.

But that’s not the whole story.

Before he left Pittsburgh June 10, the Steel City became the Steal City. Peterson was mugged. Someone sneaked up behind him on the street in front of his hotel--in broad daylight--conked him over the head, and reached into his pocket while he was sprawled on the sidewalk. The guy got away with $70.

And there Peterson was in the dugout before Tuesday’s game, cuts from the mugging still on his face and hands, but ready to return to the starting rotation.

He sat there during batting practice, holding a bat, looking out onto the field. There, in the opposing dugout, were players wearing the black and gold of . . .

Pittsburgh.

Peterson grinned at the coincidence.

“I’m going to take it out on them,” he said.

In five starts before Tuesday, he was average. Won two, lost one. ERA of 3.29.

“The big thing for him is not to overthrow,” Padre pitching coach Mike Roarke said. “It’s one thing to throw hard, but it’s another thing to get it in pretty good spots, too.”

Tuesday, Peterson hit enough spots to keep the Padres close. They trailed, 1-0, when he left after five innings.

He struck out a career-high eight Pirates, and made only one mistake. That came in the fourth, when Mike Lavalliere deposited a Peterson pitch in the right-field seats for his second homer.

The only trouble Peterson had was with the Padre offense, which didn’t score any runs for him.

Peterson departed after five innings, having allowed a run on five hits. He walked three.

“My shoulder felt good and all of my pitches were working,” Peterson said. “I probably could have gone two more innings, but they make the decisions and they wanted to be careful.”

The Padres, wouldn’t you know it, scored in the bottom of the sixth--too late to involve Peterson in a decision. Bip Roberts singled and went to second on left fielder Barry Bonds’ error. He went to third on Tony Fernandez’s sacrifice bunt and scored on Gwynn’s grounder to the pitcher.

It was 1-1--until the ninth.

But to pinpoint the Padre demise, flip back to the seventh inning. That’s what destroyed the Padres.

They loaded the bases against Randy Tomlin on Fred McGriff’s walk, Benito Santiago’s double and an intentional walk to Tim Teufel.

Into the game came Pirate reliever Stan Belinda, carrying a 3-1 record and five saves. And it was easy to see why the Pirate bullpen has not lost a game since April 15. Eleven pitchers later, the Padres had yet to figure out what had hit them:

--Thomas Howard, pinch-hitting for Scott Coolbaugh, ran the count to 2 and 0--and then swung and missed. Then, he lined a ball down the left-field line that landed foul by inches. Then he swung and missed at strike three.

--Tom Lampkin, pinch-hitting for Rich Rodriguez, swung and missed twice and then watched a pitch sail by for a called strike three.

--Bip Roberts swung and missed twice, took a ball, and then swung and missed again.

Easy as one, two, three for Belinda.

And, another Padre exercise in frustration.

“It’s a game of inches, isn’t it?” Padre Manager Greg Riddoch said. “If that ball (Howard hit) gets in there, it’s a different story.”

It was a bizarre inning and, by the end of it, Riddoch had used all of his position players except outfielder Darren Jackson.

By game’s end, the Pirates had out-hit the Padres, 10-6. That’s notable only because the Pirates had been out-hit by their opponents in each of the past 11 games.

Entering Tuesday’s game, the Pirates were hitting .189 in those 11 games. There were only three batters in the Pittsburgh lineup with an average of higher than .260: Merced (.296), Bobby Bonilla (.296) and Mike Lavalliere (.264).

But don’t feel too sorry for the Pirates. They have the best record in baseball. They have been in first place since April 27--54 days now, for those counting.

So excuse them if they seem nonchalant about a little thing like a batting slump.

“We haven’t been scoring as many runs the past couple of weeks (as usual), but we’ve got some guys swinging the bats good,” Pirate hitting coach Milt May said. “We’ve been scoring two or three runs a game, and that makes it tough. It puts a lot of pressure on our defense and pitching. We’ve got to throw in a six or eight (run game) every once in awhile, but we haven’t done that.”

May isn’t concerned with the Pirate offense’s current woes.

“During the season, you go through periods of time where not everybody is swinging the bats as well as others,” he said. “Usually, three or four guys are hitting pretty good and three or four are hitting so-so. We’re at the other end right now. We don’t want to stay there too long.