CLEVELAND \u2014 The Padres, for all intents and purposes,\u00a0 took Saturday night off.<\/p>\n
Sunday, they had to wait to get back to work.<\/p>\n
Then they won, same as most days the past three weeks. No big deal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere we\u2019re at, how we\u2019re playing, it\u2019s no sweat off our back,\u201d Jake Cronenworth said of the mentality after being held to one hit on Saturday. \u201cIt\u2019s one of those things. It\u2019s a new day.\u201d<\/p>\n
And once the storm cleared, the Padres went about beating the Guardians 5-0.<\/p>\n
The victory, which maintained for the Padres their standing in playoff position, had a little bit of a lot of things.<\/p>\n
It began with a weather delay of three hours, 11 minutes and began just 10 minutes before it would have become a night game instead of a day game.<\/p>\n
Casey Mize worked six innings for the second straight start. Luis Rengifo and Gavin Sheets hit the Padres first back-to-back home runs of the season. Jase Bowen made a diving catch that almost certainly saved a run and extended Mize\u2019s outing. The Padres did also miss a prime opportunity to make the game more comfortable before a homer by Bowen in the eighth and Cronenworth in the ninth made it more comfortable.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, it\u2019s about winning series and putting yesterday behind us,\u201d manager Craig Stammen said. \u201cWe have a chance to win the series on a rainy day. \u2026 and we came out and played a great game today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jeremiah Estrada navigated a two-out walk in the seventh. Morej\u00f3n worked a 1-2-3 eighth. Closer Mason Miller was warming up when Cronenworth homered, so Yuki Matsui got up and finished off the game.<\/p>\n
That meant Miller did not pitch in the series, the first time in 18 series wins this season that Miller has not appeared.<\/p>\n
He and Adrian Morej\u00f3n were not available in the Padres\u2019 7-5 victory Friday due to their heavy workload, there was no reason to use them in Saturday\u2019s 6-1 loss, and Miller sat down in the bullpen after Cronenworth\u2019s homer.<\/p>\n
The Padres led almost from the start of their 17th victory in their past 22 games, a .772 winning percentage that makes them the winningest team in the major leagues since July 24.<\/p>\n
After the first five batters were retired by Guardians starter Tanner Bibee, Rengifo and Sheets sent balls just beyond the wall in successive at-bats to put the Padres up 2-0.<\/p>\n
Jackson Merrill\u2019s lead-off walk and aggressive baserunning led to a 3-0 lead in the third inning. Merrill got to second because he was running on the 2-1 pitch Rengifo grounded to first base, got to third on a wild pitch and scored on Xander Bogaerts\u2019 two-out single.<\/p>\n
The Padres had a chance to add on against Bibee in the top of the sixth but failed to get a run after loading the bases with one out when Freddy Fermin\u2019s line drive to first baseman Nathaniel Lowe resulted in an inning-ending double play.<\/p>\n
Their ninth shutout of the season made that a footnote.<\/p>\n
Mize allowed just three singles and did not throw more than 16 pitches in any of his first five innings.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe guys gave me some runs early and allowed me to kind of just fill up the strike zone and try to mow down some outs and it led to a win,\u201d he said after his third start with the Padres.<\/p>\n
Relatively speaking, Mizee labored through the sixth inning.<\/p>\n
Brayan Rocchio\u2019s walk leading off that bottom of the sixth was Mize\u2019s first of the day and the first time the Guardians got their first batter aboard. It was also the first time Mize had gone to three balls since the first batter of the game.<\/p>\n
He recovered to get leadoff batter Steven Kwan on a fly ball and got help from Bowen, who had just entered the game as a defensive replacement for Sheets in left field, running 63 feet and diving to catch a line drive for the second out. Mize finished his day by retiring Jos\u00e9 Ramirez for the first time in three at-bats, on a line drive to Merrill in center field.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe went out there and attacked from pitch one,\u201d Stammen said of Mize, who allowed just one runner to reach second base. \u201c\u2026 I thought he just kept them on their heels the entire game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bowen\u2019s homer in the eighth made it 4-0.<\/p>\n
Cronenworth\u2019s homer in the ninth was the Padres\u2019 10th hit and the eighth ball they hit 100 mph or harder on Sunday. The night before, they put a season-low one ball in play that hard.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know what we have,\u201d Rengifo said. \u201cSometimes we got a game like that, so you have to turn the page and be ready for the next day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND \u2014 The Padres, for all intents and purposes,\u00a0 took Saturday night off. Sunday, they had to wait…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1005515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,3549,7264,9656,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-1005514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-america","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-san-diego","tag-sandiego","tag-uncategorized","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117108191150629910","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1005514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1005515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1005514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1005514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1005514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}