Padres beat Shohei Ohtani, Angels for second straight victory
Jake Cronenworth celebrates with Gary Sanchez after hitting a solo home run in the sixth inning off of Angels pitcher Shohei Ohtani on Tuesday at Petco Park.
Many came to Petco Park on a sunny Independence Day to see the Japanese superstar who is doing things no one has ever done.
Many in the announced crowd of 44,725 also came to cheer for the Padres.
Many came to do both.
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Even the Padres were excited.
“Arguably the best player ever,” Jake Cronenworth said. “You get an opportunity to face a guy like that, it’s always a fun competition.”
That is the magical allure of Shohei Ohtani.
On Tuesday, the Padres showed they might be in the midst of rediscovering their own magic, as they beat Ohtani and the Angels 8-5.
“Obviously, we know the importance of every game,” Xander Bogaerts said. “Today we faced a really good pitcher — one of the best in the game, one of the best athletes in the world.”
The Padres topped Ohtani in large part because Joe Musgrove was the better starting pitcher on this day, allowing one run on three hits and striking out 11 over seven innings.
“I’ve been looking forward to this series for a while, and obviously hope that you get to line up against him,” Musgrove said. “... I feel like those moments there against a two-way All-Star and Fourth of July holiday, full stadium, that kind of brings out the best in me.”
They won in large part, too, because Cronenworth and Bogaerts drove in three runs apiece for the second straight game.
The pair hit back-to-back homers in the sixth inning, which gave the Padres a 5-1 lead and precipitated Ohtani’s departure.
It got a little wild at the end.
The Padres led 8-1 entering the ninth inning and had to have closer Josh Hader finish off the victory with the tying run at the plate.
Ohtani, who the Padres wooed in 2017 and are expected to pursue in free agency after this season, served as the Angels’ designated hitter on Monday night. He leads the American League with 31 home runs and entered Tuesday’s game with the AL’s sixth-highest batting average (.303). He also had the league’s ninth-lowest ERA (3.01) and was allowing the lowest batting average (.180) among qualifying starting pitchers.
“He’s one of the best hitters in baseball, and he’s one of the best pitchers,” Cronenworth said. “Nobody else can say that. The last guy that was able to do it was Babe Ruth, and he stopped pitching.”
Ohtani was in many ways as good as advertised in his Petco Park pitching debut.
The Padres just got the better of him. Cronenworth, in particular, as he became the first player to ever have three extra-base hits in a game against Ohtani.
Cronenworth’s double in the fourth inning drove in Manny Machado and Bogaerts to give the Padres a 2-0 lead.
Cronenworth’s sixth-inning home run, one pitch after Bogaerts hit a two-run homer, put the Padres up 5-1.
After one pitch to Gary Sánchez, Ohtani left the game accompanied by an athletic trainer. It was later announced he had a blister on his right middle finger.
Bogaerts would say afterward that it didn’t seem Ohtani was at his sharpest, and the right-hander failed to finish six innings for just the fourth time this season. The five runs was tied with three other starts for the most he has allowed in 2023.
Through three innings, both pitchers had faced one more batter than the minimum — Musgrove by allowing one hit and Ohtani by getting two double-play grounders.
“It was all about just matching the zeros with him until we can get a lead,” Musgrove said. “Falling behind to a guy like that makes it really tough, and it puts a lot more pressure on the offense. So if we can keep the zeros up until we get a little bit of a lead, I thought that was going to be big for us.”
The only misstep Musgrove paid for came after the Padres were up 2-0. He left a cutter up against former Padres slugger Hunter Renfroe, who launched it just over the left field wall on the first pitch of the fifth inning.
Musgrove would face just nine more batters, allowing a leadoff single to La Costa Canyon High alum Mickey Moniak in the sixth before getting a double-play grounder. That got Musgrove through seven innings on 100 pitches, the second time in three starts he has allowed one run over seven innings.
“ Yeah, things are starting to line up well,” said Musgrove, who has a 2.01 ERA over his past eight starts after beginning the season late due to a fractured left big toe and working through additional physical maladies that contributed to his having a 6.75 ERA after five starts.
The Padres added two runs in the seventh inning against reliever Gerardo Reyes when Ha-Seong Kim was hit by a pitch, Juan Soto walked and Machado and Bogaerts hit successive one-out RBI singles.
Rougned Odor led off the eighth with a single, went to third on Trent Grisham’s single and scored on Soto’s groundout to third base.
“Xander broke it open there with that two-run homer,” Cronenworth said. “That was a huge one. Just to be able to tack on there in the later innings was even bigger.”
That turned out to be so.
Luis García had worked a scoreless eighth inning, and José Castillo entered the game with seven runs to work with.
The Padres were grateful for all of them.
Castillo allowed two runs and loaded the bases on a single, a triple, a sacrifice fly and two walks. That prompted manager Bob Melvin to bring in Hader, who walked in two runs but got the final two outs to secure his 19th save and the Padres’ second consecutive victory, something they had not achieved since June 22-23.
“It’s better than losing a game,” Melvin said. “Obviously, it wasn’t a great feeling there at the end. But we won the game, so we’ll settle on that.”
Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune
