Padres start August with win over Rockies
Juan Soto celebrates as he crosses home plate after hitting a three-run homer against the Rockies in the fifth inning of Tuesday’s game.
The Padres finished their best month poorly on Monday night.
A new month dawned Tuesday with some new players about to join the team and the Padres ready to take another crack at a winning streak.
Hours after the team added four veterans at the trade deadline, the Padres went out and beat the Rockies 8-5 in part on the strength of Juan Soto’s two home runs.
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Soto was the Padres’ big prize — one of the biggest such prizes ever — at last year’s trade deadline.
No one is expecting this year’s additions — starting pitcher Rich Hill, reliever Scott Barlow and two potential designated hitters in Ji-Man Choi and Garrett Cooper — to be saviors. They were acquired as supplements to a team universally believed to be underachieving but also still with a shot at making the postseason.
“Those guys are gonna be impactful to this team,” Manny Machado said after the game. “You’ve got some guys who are gonna bring experience to the ballclub … and guys that are gonna boost our club. So we’re excited to have them and know that we’re in a better position today than we were yesterday.”
Hill will head to San Diego. Barlow, Choi and Cooper will join the Padres here and be active for Wednesday’s game.
Tuesday’s victory kept the Padres (53-55) five games back in the race for the final National League wild-card spot with 54 games remaining.
It came after Monday’s 10-inning loss to start the series here stopped a winning streak at a season-high three games and completed a July in which the Padres went 15-10 to make Tuesday’s trade haul seem prudent to the team’s decision makers.
As the previous night’s game had, Tuesday’s game began with a steady rain falling on Coors Field. But this one began on time, and the rain stopped three innings in.
Padres right-hander Pedro Avila, making his first start of the season after a pair of scoreless relief outings (five total innings) in July, took 32 pitches to get through an eventful first inning that featured three singles, a walk, a sacrifice bunt, a wild pitch and two strikeouts. But he left the bases loaded after allowing just one run.
He stranded two more runners in the second and one apiece in the third and fourth, allowing two more hits, walking two more, throwing another wild pitch and striking out five more along the way to throwing a total of 88 pitches.
The Padres didn’t start out quickly against Rockies right-hander Peter Lambert, but they got him out in a hurry.
After Trent Grisham walked with one out in the third inning, Fernando Tatis Jr. one-hopped the wall for a two-out double that brought Grisham around to tie the game.
Tatis also drove in the go-ahead run in the fifth inning, this time on a fielder’s choice after Luis Campusano singled, Grisham walked and Ha-Seong Kim loaded the bases on a dribbled infield single that also prompted Rockies manager Bud Black to remove Lambert. Tatis, facing reliever Tommy Doyle, then grounded into a fielder’s choice that forced Kim out at second but scored Campusano.
Soto followed with a 431-foot home run over the wall in center field that put the Padres up 4-1.
The rain resumed briefly in the seventh inning, and the Rockies scored again as well.
Brent Honeywell relieved Avila in the fifth and faced just seven batters in his first two innings. But he didn’t record an out in his third inning.
Jurickson Profar and Ezequiel Tovar began the inning with singles before Steven Wilson was called on to replace Honeywell.
Wilson’s third pitch was a sweeper that Ryan McMahon sent over the tall wall in right field to make it a 5-4 game.
Three pitches later, Elias Diaz lined a double down the left field line before Wilson retired the next three batters.
Soto increased the Padres’ cushion with an even longer home run to center field (438 feet) in the top of the eighth.
Robert Suarez allowed a leadoff single before getting through the eighth before the Padres added two runs in the ninth on Jake Cronenworth’s leadoff single, Gary Sánchez’s one-out walk and RBI singles by Grisham and Kim.
That meant Josh Hader could sit down in the bullpen, and Tim Hill began the bottom of the ninth instead. A walk, a double and an RBI groundout later, Hader came in to get the final two outs, earn his 26th save and finish off a successful start to August.
“It was big,” manager Bob Melvin said of Tuesday’s events. “These are the type of days that should inspire you a little bit. ... A little different that we had to use the bullpen, Avila, a guy who hasn’t started a ton for us, to be able to get through the game. But these type of days, if you can put together good games, and now you’ve got some new reinforcements coming the next day, it should be good.”
Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune
