SAN DIEGO (AP) \u2014 Ty France homered and drove in three runs and Randy V\u00e1squez and two relievers combined on a two-hitter as the San Diego Padres beat the Minnesota Twins 6-2 Friday night in the opener of a three-game series between teams fighting for wild-card berths.<\/p>\n
The Padres held onto the National League’s third wild card while the Twins dropped one game behind Texas in the race for the American League’s third wild card.<\/p>\n
V\u00e1squez (9-6) matched his career long with seven innings while allowing two runs and two hits. He struck out three and walked none. Bradgley Rodriguez pitched a perfect eighth and Mason Miller struck out the side in the ninth.<\/p>\n
The Padres retired the final 16 Twins batters.<\/p>\n
San Diego won for the ninth time in 12 games and for the 19th time in 26.<\/p>\n
The Twins, coming off a three-game sweep of the NL East-leading Atlanta Braves, lost for the fourth time in seven games.<\/p>\n
France hit a two-run homer to left with two outs in the first off left-hander Connor Prielipp (3-7). It was his 18th and Manny Machado was aboard on a single.<\/p>\n
V\u00e1squez’s only big mistake was allowing Kody Clemens’ two-run triple off the right field wall with two outs in the fourth tie the game.<\/p>\n
The Padres rallied for three runs in the fifth on four hits, a walk and a sacrifice fly. Tatis, Luis Rengifo and Machado hit consecutive RBI singles with one out and France followed with a sacrifice fly.<\/p>\n
Prielipp allowed six runs and eight hits in six innings, struck out seven and walked two.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Twins RHP Dean Kremer (2-4, 5.40 ERA) and Padres RHP Casey Mize (5-7, 3.18) were scheduled to start Saturday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN DIEGO (AP) \u2014 Ty France homered and drove in three runs and Randy V\u00e1squez and two relievers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4658,5,20629,7344,7569,42227],"class_list":["post-68547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-france","tag-baseball","tag-france","tag-minnesota","tag-padres","tag-score","tag-twins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}