The Padres’ big bats were big. That was different.
The Padres’ bullpen was the big difference.
With home runs from Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado and their highest-leverage relievers covering more than half the game, the Padres beat the Diamondbacks 4-3 on Thursday night at Petco Park.
It was just the second time this season that Tatis and Machado homered in the same game. Xander Bogaerts drove in his first run of July with his first extra-base hit of July.
Jackson Merrill walked three times. Gavin Sheets had three singles and walked. Jose Iglesias singled twice.
But the game shifted on both teams’ starting pitchers throwing too many pitches to make it out of the fifth inning.
That left the game as a battle between the bullpen with the major leagues’ second-best ERA and the bullpen with MLB’s fourth-worst ERA.
And the better bullpen — that belonging to the Padres — had its best arms available.
“We know we’ve got the advantage with the bullpen we’ve got,” Machado said. “We had all our guys up today. We just had to get it to them. … It was great. Good defense, the approach as an offense was great. And then the bullpen, they came in and did what they’ve been doing all year.”
So things looked pretty favorable when the Padres broke a 2-2 tie and scored twice in the fifth inning.
These things don’t always go like the numbers say they should.
And it got a little less favorable when the Diamondbacks scored a run off Jason Adam in the seventh inning.
The Padres still had Jeremiah Estrada lined up for the eighth inning and Robert Suarez for the ninth.
Estrada stranded a man at third base in the eighth, and Suarez worked a 1-2-3 ninth for his major league-leading 27th save. That also secured Morejón’s seventh win, most among major league relievers. Thursday’s hold was Jason Adam’s 22nd, tied for second in the majors, and Estrada’s 19th, tied for fourth.
Said Shildt: “Back of the bullpen has been a lot of our success, our calling card.”
The Padres’ path toward closing out their 50th victory of the season began with Adrian Morejón replacing starter Randy Vásquez with one out and two on in the fifth.
Morejón struck out Diamondbacks’ cleanup hitter Josh Naylor and got All-Star Eugenio Suarez on a pop-up.
Machado led off the bottom of the inning with a home run on the first pitch from Diamondbacks’ starter Eduardo Rodriguez.
A single by Sheets ended Rodriguez’s night after 88 pitches, which was two more than Vásquez had thrown.
Bogaerts greeted Juan Morillo with a double to left field that scored Sheets from first.
After Morejón escaped a jam in the sixth, Adam took over at the start of the seventh.
Corbin Carroll led off with a single, stole second before Ketel Marte popped out and scored on Geraldo Perdomo’s double grounded just inside first base.
Perdomo got to third base on a fly ball to center field by Suarez and a groundout by Lourdes Gurriel Jr.
The Padres could hope it was significant that they got a power surge after entering Thursday’s game with the fourth-fewest home runs in the major leagues.
They could be pleased with getting back to making pitchers work after a night in which they had gone down fairly quickly against Brandon Pfaadt, as he worked eight innings for the first time in his career.
The Padres got eight hits and walked twice against Rodriguez.
But the Diamondbacks also grinded Vásquez.
The right-hander took just 28 pitches to get through the first two innings before throwing 33 in the third, as the Diamondbacks took a 2-0 lead.
Vásquez’s old stumbling block, the walk, began his troubles. And after putting on Jake McCarthy, he yielded a double by Alek Thomas before two successive sacrifice flies built the Diamondbacks’ lead.
The first sacrifice, Jose Herrera, was caught in right field by Tatis, who threw home to try to get Thomas. That allowed McCarthy to get to third, and he scored on Carroll’s fly ball to center field.
Tatis got one of the runs back in the bottom of the third with his 420-foot blast to center field, his first home run since June 23, a span of 52 at-bats.
Another recent rarity helped the Padres tie the game in the fourth.
Merrill, who had not been on base since Saturday, a span of 17 plate appearances, walked to start the inning.
A single by Iglesias moved Merrill to third, and Jake Cronenworth’s groundout to first base brought in Merrill.
As pleased as he was about, Shildt and others lamented the Padres not being able to add on, as they failed to bring a runner home from third in the sixth and seventh and from second in the eighth inning. But there was no lamenting the result because of who did come through at the end.
“Obviously, we’d like to give them a little bit more of a leeway than one run,” Sheets said. “But with those guys in there, they make the most of it.”
Originally Published: July 10, 2025 at 9:36 PM PDT