Padres don't let lead get away this time, rout Blue Jays in series opener
The Padres added on, and it held up this time.
With a 9-1 victory over the Blue Jays on Tuesday, the Padres stopped a three-game skid and a streak of three straight games in which they lost after leading.
“You know, we’ve been able to do that at times after a tough week, series of games or whatever,” manager Bob Melvin said of the Padres’ answering a difficult stretch with a big game. “It’s finishing them out (that has been a problem lately). So, no drama today was great.”
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Before arriving in Canada late Sunday night, the Padres lost their final three games in Philadelphia — losing a lead in all three and blowing 3-0 advantages in the first and last of those.
They were up 4-1 after three innings and 6-1 after five innings Tuesday.
The Padres’ first two runs came on Juan Soto’s homer in the first first inning, solo homers by Manny Machado and Gary Sánchez made it a five-run lead in the fifth, and Trent Grisham’s solo homer in the eighth made it 7-1.
Turned out, Joe Musgrove (9-2, 3.16) and rookie relievers Tom Cosgrove (one inning) and Alek Jacob (two innings) didn’t even need all that, as the Padres bullpen did not yield a run for the first time in 18 games.
The Blue Jays scored a run on three singles against Musgrove in the first inning and had just two hits over the next five innings. Musgrove, who said he “tweaked” his left adductor (groin) “very slightly” early in the game, threw a season-high 109 pitches over six innings and improved to 8-0 with a 1.76 ERA over his past 10 starts.
“Any time they give me an early lead it gives me all the confidence in the world to just go out there and attack,” Musgrove said “... The offense was banging on all cylinders.”
The Padres made Blue Jays starter Alek Manoah throw a lot of pitches, right from the start. The struggling former All-Star also did not get any help from home plate umpire Malachi Moore.
Leadoff batter Ha-Seong Kim grounded out on the eighth pitch he saw before Fernando Tatis Jr. worked a full-count walk.
Manoah got ahead 0-2 against Soto, but three foul balls and three called balls preceded Soto sending the ninth pitch he saw just over the wall in right-center field.
Included among those nine pitches was a clear strike called a ball, which would have ended the at-bat three pitches before the homer.
By the second inning, Manoah was incensed by Moore’s strike zone. Manoah had walked off the mound thinking he had struck out Grisham on a pitch at the top of the zone to end the inning. When Grisham walked three pitches later, Blue Jays pitching coach Pete Walker visited the mound and was ejected after having some words for Moore.
Manoah was at 61 pitches after two innings and at 81 after a third inning, during which he surrendered two more runs.
That inning began with back-to-back doubles by Tatis and Soto. After a walk by Machado, Soto sprinted to third on a fly ball out by Xander Bogaerts and scored on Jake Cronenworth’s sacrifice fly.
Manoah, who returned from a month-long retooling at the Blue Jay’s complex in Florida with a strong start on July 7 in Detroit, was finished Tuesday after Matt Carpenter walked leading off the fourth inning and Grisham followed by reaching on a fielder’s choice.
Reliever Nate Pearson retired the top three batters in the Padres’ order to end the fourth and remained on the mound in the fifth.
It was in that inning that Machado hit his team-leading 18th home run of the season and his ninth in a span of 48 at-bats to make it 5-1, and Sánchez hit his ninth homer of the season to make it 6-1.
After Grisham hit his 10th homer of the season in the eighth, the Padres added their final two runs in the ninth on a walk by Soto, single by Machado, RBI double by Cronenworth and sacrifice fly by Sánchez.
It was the bounceback they needed.
But resilience has sort of become the Padres’ specialty — almost as much as inconsistency. With a 45-50 record and an MLB-leading 29 losses by two or one runs, they have had a lot of practice at getting back up after being knocked down.
So now they have won another game by a lot. It was the 19th time among their 45 victories they have won by five or more runs. Building off such games has been the issue. They are 7-12 in the games immediately following those wins.
“We just gotta be consistent,” Soto said. “It’s been like that whole year. We have games like these and then we come back and we don’t do anything. We just gotta keep the same pace every day and try to come to do the same thing.”
Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune
