Bard suffered the injury on the last swing of the last round of early batting practice prior to Friday’s game against the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field.

Bard, who suffered a similar injury when he was in the Minor Leagues in 1999, said the pain in his elbow was enough to keep him from throwing, and that he will likely need 5 to 7 days before he will play again.

The San Diego Padres recalled rookie Luke Carlin from Triple-A Portland to take his place. Carlin was in uniform for Saturday’s game, because the Beavers happened to be playing in Colorado Springs this weekend.

Bard will be eligible to come off the disabled list on Aug. 22, when the Padres play the Giants. To date, Bard has missed 55 games because of injury, 54 of were due to a high ankle sprain suffered on May 22.

“It’s hard, I’ve never experienced anything like this,” Bard said.

Michael Barrett, the other catcher on the Opening Day roster, has missed 70 games with first a sprained ligament in his right elbow, and most recently, a fractured nose and orbital bone that occurred, oddly enough, on July 3, when the team was in Denver.

“Two veteran catchers at a premium position,” Padres manager Bud Black said.

All told, Padres catchers have missed 145 games this season. The total number of missed games for the team this season is 842, up from 280 a year ago.

Bard had appeared in just six games since coming off the disabled list on July 24 and was hitting .209 this season.

“It’s been really, really hard this year to play this bad as a team, but it’s been really, really hard not to be able to help,” Bard said.

Carlin is no stranger to the Padres. He made his Major League debut on May 10 and has appeared in 30 games and started 23 behind the plate. Offensively, Carlin is hitting .138 in 80 at-bats after hitting .328 with Portland.

Rookie catcher Nick Hundley figured to get an extended look between now and the end of the season, regardless of Bard’s injury. Hundley is hitting .221 thus far and has been impressive behind the plate, throwing out 7 of 22 would-be base stealers.

On Friday, Hundley threw out Colorado’s speedy lead-off hitter, Willy Taveras, in the first inning, and appeared to get him again later in the game, though Taveras was ruled safe. Carlin’s times on the throws were 1.83 and 1.87, below the 1.9 mark the Padres want to see from their catchers.

Corey Brock is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Josh Banks took the loss and fell to 2-3 on the season.  Banks was pitching really good until the fifth inning when he gave up four runs.  An error by shortstop Khalil Greene didn’t help him out by any means in the fifth inning though.  Clay Hensley threw two innings of relief before Cla Meredith pitched the eighth inning.

As for the Padres offense, there really isn’t a whole lot to blog about to be honest.  Cook limited them to only five hits in the game and they were not able to score any runs.  The offense took zero walks and struck out four times while leaving nine runners on base.

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Odalis Perez seemed to have great control over the Padre lineup.  The Padres were able to hit the ball well, however well placed National players had no problem running down deep shots the warning track.  The Padres missed timely hitting stranding one runner in the first and two runners in the 3^rd inning.

In the 5^th inning Tadahito Iguchi was able to score Jody Gerut on a broken bat blooper however that would be the end of the scoring as Brian Giles was retired with two men on board.

Mike Adams came in to relief Estes in the 6^th and promptly gave up a solo home run to Lastings Milledge (3) giving the Nats a 5-1 lead.

In the 7^th the Nationals Felipe Lopez hit a double to center, Cristian Guzman singled to right and Aaron Boone was able to score Lopez on a sacrifice fly to give the Nats a 6-1 lead.

In the bottom of the 7^th inning the swinging friars came to life with Luke Carlin and Tony Clark hit back to back doubles to bring the Padres within range.  Scott Harriston was hitting the ball hard all night and connected for a two run homerun (7) scoring Clark and making the score 6-4.  Iguchi then singled to right and Adrian Gonzalez was hit by a pitch to bring the go ahead run in Kevin Kouzmanoff up to the plate.  However Nats pitcher Luis Ayala was able to hand Kouzmanoff his third strike out of the evening and putting to rest the Padres rally.

Ayala and Jon Rauch were able to sit down the last six Padre batters in a row to give the Nationals the 6-4 win.

Note: Justin Huber started in left field, however he was pulled after the first inning suffering from back spasms.

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The Padres have the starting rotation to make the post season, and in a short three game series I can really see them advancing.  When you have Jake Peavy and Chris Young throwing for you during the first two games you have got to always like your changes in a series.  Now you can add in Mark Prior who recently signed a one-year contact with the Padres to the rotation in probably June.

The question for the Padres however is their offense.  Will they be able to score enough runs to win the close ballgames at Petco?  You will be hitting a lot more doubles then home runs so you will have to play a lot of small ball.  That is my only question heading into the 2008 season for the Padres.  What do you think?  Do the Padres have enough firepower to make the playoffs in 08?  Leave us a comment and let your opinions be heard.