Jackson Merrill brought a ball back from beyond the wall in center in the fifth inning. Fernando Tatis Jr. did the same in right field in the eighth.<\/p>\n
In between all that robbery, Luis Arraez of people muscled up for a home run that was all the Padres needed on Tuesday in a 1-0 win over the Diamondbacks.<\/p>\n
Arraez\u2019s fifth homer of the season stunned a cruising Merrill Kelly, Nick Pivetta was an out shy of his 11th quality start and Robert Suarez punctuated his addition to the NL All-Star roster with his MLB-leading 26th save as the Padres evened the four-game series in front of a crowd of 38,670 at Petco Park.<\/p>\n
The Padres believe they deserve more All-Stars still, starting with the arm that\u2019s kept their rotation afloat:<\/p>\n
Pivetta.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old right-hander struck out seven and scattered two hits and three walks over 5\u2154 shutout innings.<\/p>\n
A lengthy fourth inning and a lengthy at-bat in the sixth that led to Padres manager Mike Shildt\u2019s ejection \u2014 not to mention an offense stymied by Arizona\u2019s Merrill Kelly until Arraez\u2019s seventh-inning homer \u2014 kept Pivetta from matching a career-high 10th win, all before next week\u2019s All-Star break.<\/p>\n
The Padres, however, still won because Merrill robbed Corbin Carroll of a homer in the fifth inning, Tatis robbed Josh Naylor of a home run in the eighth and Arraez, of all people, yanked a ball over the wall in right in the seventh for his fifth homer of the season.<\/p>\n
The blast stunned Kelly, who needed just 77 pitches to get through seven innings.<\/p>\n
An emerging force in a rotation that won\u2019t have Joe Musgrove all year, is awaiting Michael King\u2019s return and just got Yu Darvish back, Pivetta leads the Padres in wins (9) and innings (102\u2154).<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a tough League,\u201d Shildt said. \u201cA lot of good starters in this league. Nick\u2019s more than done his part, but for us, he\u2019s clearly the All-Star of our starting rotation in the first half, and he knows he\u2019s done a great job and but he\u2019s a team guy, and he\u2019s ready to get after the second half.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pivetta retired the first nine hitters he faced Tuesday without incident.<\/p>\n
Carroll broke up that run with a single to open the fourth inning. Ketel Marte followed with a walk and after Geraldo Perdomo bunted the runners to second and third, Pivetta elected to walk Naylor to load the bases for Eugenio Suarez, Arizona\u2019s leading home run hitter with 28.<\/p>\n
Of course, Eugenio Suarez also leads Arizona in strikeouts and his 100th punchout of the season got Pivetta one step closer to getting out of the jam.<\/p>\n
When the ensuing hitter, Lourdes Gurriel Jr., swung through a full-count, 96 mph four-seamer up in the zone, Pivetta screamed as he hopped off the mound, pumped his fist and stomped toward his dugout.<\/p>\n
Merrill robbing Carroll of a would-be, two-run homer got Pivetta out of the fifth unscathed.<\/p>\n
In the sixth, Pivetta lost a nine-pitch battle via a leadoff walk to Ketel Marte, but not before Shildt was ejected for arguing balls and strikes on a borderline ball call.<\/p>\n
First baseman Luis Arraez had to settle for one out when he couldn\u2019t cleanly field an ensuing ground ball and Pivetta punched out Josh Naylor to get himself one out closer to a quality start.<\/p>\n
But Pivetta was at 104 pitches and in no position to win an argument with bench coach Brian Esposito to stay in the game.<\/p>\n
After a brief conversation, Pivetta walked off the mound to an ovation from a crowd of 38,670 while shooting a look toward plate umpire Brian Walsh.<\/p>\n
Jeremiah Estrada promptly struck out Eugenio Suarez to escape that jam and Adri\u00e1n Morej\u00f3n left the bases loaded the next inning with a strikeout of Marte.<\/p>\n
Tatis bringing a ball back from the other side of the right-field wall helped Jason Adam out of the eighth inning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jackson Merrill brought a ball back from beyond the wall in center in the fifth inning. Fernando Tatis…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":50470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,1370,1266,3549,1306,7264,62,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-50469","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-san-diego","14":"tag-san-diego-padres","15":"tag-sandiego","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114821365048327278","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50469","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=50469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}