Mark Grant is one of the game’s most entertaining color analysts. Teamed with play-by-play announcer Don Orsillo, the man affectionately known as “Mud” is a big part of why the San Diego Padres TV booth polled as baseball’s best in Awful Announcing’s 2025 local broadcaster rankings. Now in his 11th season alongside Orsillo, Grant first began working Padres games in 1996. His previous partners in the booth include the legendary Dick Enberg.
Grant was a pitcher prior to becoming a broadcaster, toeing the rubber for six teams across the 1984-1993 seasons, including the Padres, with whom he made 126 of his 233 appearances. All told, he went 22-32 with eight saves and a 4.31 ERA over 638 2/3 innings.
How well does he remember his matchups against certain batters he faced? As I’ve done previously with David Cone, Mark Gubicza, and Jeff Montgomery — those pieces can be found here, here, and here — I decided to find out by challenging him to a career quiz. Not only did he oblige, he supplied fun anecdotes along the way.
I began by asking the pitcher-turned-broadcaster which batter he faced the most times.
“It would have to be Dale Murphy,” replied Grant, nailing the correct answer almost immediately. “He should be in the Hall of Fame. Two-time MVP. Opposite-field pop. Knew the strike zone. A lot of people don’t know that he came up as a catcher before transitioning to the outfield. Really good athlete. Great guy. I played with him in Atlanta and he was a good teammate. Definitely a threat at the plate. You had to be really careful when you were facing him.”
Informed that Murphy was also the batter that he logged the most strikeouts against, Grant responded, “Really?” I proceeded to ask how he typically attacked the erstwhile Braves slugger.
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“You had to pitch him in,” Grant replied. “That was a pitch he’d fight off. I threw him sliders, trying to keep them down and away. I was also careful if I was trying to locate a fastball. I didn’t want to let him get extended; I tried to get in on him a little bit.”
Murphy went 9-for-31 against Grant with one home run, a pair of walks, and seven strikeouts. Another outfielder had even more success against him. Not only did he log the most hits against Grant, he was never set down in their matchups by way of the K. I asked Grant if he knew who that player was, without revealing the position.
“Barry Larkin comes to mind,” Grant responded incorrectly, naming a player who fanned once and notched seven hits against him. “Lets’s see… maybe Eric Davis?”
It wasn’t Davis (nine hits), but rather Andre Dawson, who went 12-for-21 with three home runs.
“Andre Dawson was a guy who struck fear into a lot of pitchers,” he said of the Hall of Famer. “I faced him in my [Padres] debut when I was traded from the Giants in 1987. We were at Wrigley. He hit two home runs off of me; I hung sliders. Another guy who liked to get extended, so you had to pitch him in. Really good bat speed. It was off the charts. I couldn’t get him out.”
Tim Wallach had the second-most hits against Grant, going 10-for-20 with two doubles and a pair of home runs.
“He stayed way off the plate,” Grant said of the five-time All-Star. “I thought I could go fastballs away to him, and he would just rifle them to right-center field. That was his power, because he would dive. I found out that you had to pitch him in, fastballs in, because he would get jammed. Really good third baseman, too. I was always a fan of him when he was with the Expos, and then the Dodgers. Yeah, one of those guys who split a gap to the opposite field with the best of them.”
Another batter punished him to the tune of 4-for-5 with two home runs and a walk. I didn’t expect Grant to know who that was, but I was interested in what he recalled about Dan Driessen.
“I never would have guessed that,” admitted Grant. “He was with The Big Red Machine, right? And then we were teammates later with the Giants, toward the end of his career. He could hit. Anyone you faced from The Big Red Machine was incredible.”
The batter he faced the most times without giving up a hit went 0-for-9 with three walks and six strikeouts. Grant was able to name Jack Clark without hesitation, although his recollections of the former slugger were unfortunately lost in the ether, as the recording app on my iPhone glitched multiple times, leaving words unaccounted for. Also lost was our exchange on how Ricky Jordan grounded into four double plays in just seven plate appearances against him, as were his memories of owning former Friars shortstops Ozzie Smith (2-for-20) and Garry Templeton (0-for-9).
Fortunately, an anecdote about the aforementioned Eric Davis wasn’t lost. The former Cincinnati Reds slugger took him deep four times — the most home runs he gave up to a batter — while going an overall 9-for-20 with five walks.
“I was in [Triple-A] Tucson, got called up to the Astros, and the Reds were in town,” recalled Grant, who was with Houston for part of the 1993 season, his last in the majors. “We were playing in the Dome. Bob Cluck was our pitching coach, and after we went over their lineup in our pitchers’ meeting, he said to me, ‘Hey Mud, you got a second?’ I said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ He goes, ‘If Eric Davis comes up, you probably won’t be facing him. Just leave your glove under the bench.’”