Now, that's how you exact revenge.

Southpaw David Wells pitched six strong innings and recorded the first two-hit game of his 21-year career to lead the Dodgers to a huge win over the Padres and Greg Maddux on Thursday night, ratcheting things up in the NL Wild Card race.

With their 6-3 win over San Diego, the Dodgers have crept within a game and a half of the NL Wild Card-leading Padres.

After being released by the Padres just over a month ago ago, who would have thought the 44-year-old Wells would still be pitching for a major league team, never mind actually having a huge impact on the playoff race?

But after yielding just four hits and three runs to improve to 8-8 on the season, Wells is now 3-0 with a 3.75 ERA in four starts with the Dodgers.

This is the same man who went 0-3 with a 14.33 ERA over his final four starts as a Padre before they cut him loose.

The fact that Wells has revitalized his career isn't a shock – he's done that seemingly countless times after being all but written off. But what made yesterday's performance so startling was Wells' contributions with the bat, including a double and a single. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, you have to go back to 1952 to find a player older who recorded his first career multi-hit game – Hall of Fame pitcher Satchel Paige, who was 45 when he did it.

In just the second career matchup between Wells and Maddux, Mad Dog was bested by Boomer, snapping a five-game win streak for the 41-year-old righty. In lasting just 3 1/3 innings (his shortest outing since 2003), Maddux was ripped for 10 hits and six runs.

On the plus side, Maddux still hasn't walked a batter over his last 57 2/3 innings. In fact, he entered Thursday on a serious roll, having yielded three runs or less over each of his last 11 starts. On this night, however, he couldn't come close to matching his former teammate's performance. Yet, the classy Maddux took things in stride.

"Boomer has a lot of self confidence. There's nothing he can't do if he puts his mind to it," Maddux said. Like I said, he's a classy guy.

Wells, meanwhile, is looking like an option in NL-only leagues suddenly. After taking a perfect game into the sixth inning of his last start, Wells gave up just one hit and one walk through five innings Thursday, facing just one batter over the minimum. He seemed to tire in the sixth, not a surprise considering the amount of baserunning he had to do. Running the bases when your torso resembles a Smart Car is taxing.

While Boomer tries to catch his breath after all that running, let's take a quick tour around the bigs on a relatively quiet night of action Thursday…

• There was a big surprise announcement out of Minnesota Thursday as GM Terry Ryan revealed that he will step down after 13 years at the helm of the Twins. His tenure started slowly, but he wound up building the team into a consistent winner, with the Twins earning four playoff berths since 2002. The club's current streak of six straight winning seasons is in jeopardy this year with a current record of 72-74, but there's no denying that Ryan's time at the top has been a success. He will stay on as a senior advisor to Bill Smith, who will be promoted from assistant GM to take over Ryan's job. This is just one of many moves that essentially amount to a major organizational shake up for the Twinkies. Twins' blogger and fellow Rotoworld columnist Aaron Gleeman pipes in with his thoughts on this news on his site at www.aarongleeman.com.



• James Loney has been a big part of the Dodgers creeping their way back into the picture. He absolutely feasted on the Padres this week, going 3-for-4 with a run and four RBI Thursday to give him a 9-for-13 mark with eight RBI for the series. Over his last seven games, the rookie has gone 15-for-29, while clouting five homers and driving in 12 runs. For the season, he's batting .329 with 11 homers and 52 RBI in 80 games. We were so high on Loney after his great late-season run in 2006 (.346 in September; .321 in August), but when the Dodgers re-signed Nomar Garciaparra, the kid had to be put on ice for another year. However, Loney is still just 23, and his future remains very, very promising.

AL Quick Hits: That was one heck of a pitching battle between A.J. Burnett and rookie Ian Kennedy in Toronto on Thursday. Burnett is rolling since coming off the DL, with a 1.78 ERA over his last seven starts. Last night, he held the Yanks to four hits and a run over eight innings, and while he didn't factor into the decision, I was very impressed by how biting his curve looked. Combined with that 99 mph heater, that's deadly stuff. Not to be outdone, Kennedy continues to pitch like a veteran. He lasted seven-plus innings, surrendering just one run and one hit. While Kennedy's fastball can't hold a candle to Burnett's, his changeup is off the charts, and that's helped him record a 1.89 ERA through three big-league starts. He looks very poised to me…Seattle reliever Ryan Rowland-Smith, roughed up his last three outings, tossed 2 1/3 shutout innings Thursday to earn his first major league win. At one point, he fanned five straight.

NL Quick Hits: With the Giants playing out the string, I'd like to see them take a very long look at right fielder Nate Schierholtz down the stretch. He's 10-for-27 (.370) this month, with two doubles and two triples. As we know, the Giants don't have a great track record in recent years producing position players, so it would behoove them to get this 23-year-old kid in the lineup every day…Mike Maroth, who has surrendered 18 runs (12 earned) over his last five innings, has mercifully been yanked from the Cardinals' rotation. He is winless in seven starts and will obviously not be a factor for the remainder of the season…Reportedly, the Giants are strongly considering re-signing 41-year-old shortstop Omar Vizquel for another season. His defense alone makes him valuable, but he's been a complete non-factor at the dish this year. Vizquel has just 115 hits, only 21 of which have gone for extra bases.

Rob Blackstien runs www.RotoRob.com, a site featuring daily fantasy sports analysis. In addition to his baseball work on the site, he contributes to Rotoworld’s basketball coverage. Rob also writes for CREATiVESPORTS.com, BaseballNotebook.com and has contributed to Rotoman’s Fantasy Baseball Guide and Fantasy Football Guide.

Contact Rob Blackstien