PADRES HAVE PULSE
Lugo’s quality start, Bogaerts’ 2-run homer key victory over Miami
Mediocrity is, at this point, something to which the Padres can aspire.
And so on this 10-game homestand, which seemed like something of a last stand, they achieved that middling level by finishing with a 5-5 record.
Seth Lugo threw six scoreless innings, Xander Bogaerts hit a two-run homer and the Padres kept their faint postseason hopes from fading further with a 4-0 victory over the Marlins on Wednesday afternoon.
“We beat a good team today,” Manny Machado said. “We beat a Cy Young winner today.”
Indeed, the Padres did do enough against the reigning National League Cy Young Award winner, Sandy Alcántara. The right-hander entered the game having posted a 2.54 ERA over his previous eight starts, a span in which he threw two complete games, and allowed all four runs on seven hits in his 62⁄3 innings.
“To win a big series is a step in the right direction,” said first baseman Garrett Cooper.
Still, consistent with the predicament they have put themselves in, the Padres’ forward progress came with a potential stumbling block.
They will almost certainly play their next 10 games without primary setup man Robert Suarez, who was ejected before the eighth inning for what umpires deemed to be a left wrist that was “too sticky, very sticky.”
The ejection, which carries a 10-game suspension, occurred after the routine inspection to which all relievers are subject when entering a game turned into multiple umpires inspecting Suarez’s arm and determining he was in violation of the rule prohibiting pitchers from having foreign substances that could help alter the flight of thrown balls. Suarez maintained he only had sunscreen on his arm and did not say whether he will appeal the suspension.
Suarez is the first Padres pitcher to be ejected for a sticky-stuff violation since the
D1 league began cracking down in 2021.
Seems about par for the Padres’ uneven course.
Even winning without such drama at this point seems like barely surviving.
“Every game now matters that much more,” Bogaerts said.
Wednesday’s victory left the Padres 6 games out of the National League’s final playoff spot after the Reds beat the Angels late Wednesday night. Another page coming off the calendar leaves them with just 34 games in which to make up that deficit, and they have to jump four teams along the way.
The Marlins are one of those teams.
“It’s daunting,” Padres manager Bob Melvin said. “But today would have been — we lose today — much more so . ... It’s still doable. But, you know, we’re later on in the season. We know we have to win series. We have to win games.”
The Padres arrived home the night of Aug. 13 in the same spot, 5½ games out. And given the deficit and the finite time remaining, stagnation is another form of losing.
The mere progression of the schedule makes each loss seem like more.
“You can’t get those back,” Bogaerts had said late Tuesday night. “It’s not like we were early on and we were like, ‘You know what?
We still have like 110 games left or 115, 120 games left.’ We don’t. Every loss should feel double.”
Bogaerts helped Wednesday not be doubly bad.
His sixth-inning homer padded a lead that had stood since the first inning thanks to Lugo spreading around three hits and turning in his 12th quality start.
The Padres’ first run came after Ha-Seong Kim began the bottom of the first inning by flaring a ball into left field that he turned into a double, advancing to third on Fernando Tatis Jr.’s groundout to third and scoring on Juan Soto’s single grounded through the right side.
Tatis’ single in the eighth inning scored Cooper from
second base to make it 4-0 and end Alcántara’s day.
Steven Wilson worked a perfect seventh and Tom Cosgrove, called on when Suarez had to leave, a perfect eighth. Josh Hader loaded the bases with one out in the ninth inning and then ended the game with two strikeouts.
It was all very on brand. A sigh of relief. A reprieve.
“I think regardless who we were playing and where we were at, that this is probably was as much of a mustwin as we’ve had this year,” Melvin said. “All of them are important now in the position that we put ourselves in. But against these guys, to lose two out of three would have been even of a tougher road.”
The Padres head to play
the Brewers for three games and then the Cardinals for three more before returning home for the second-to-last homestand. They are attempting to become just the fourth team since 1995 to make the postseason after being five or more games behind with 34 games remaining. The 2004 Astros, who were six games back with 34 to play, are the only one of those teams to have also had four teams between them and the final playoff spot with 34 games remaining.
“It will take a lot of wins,” Bogaerts said. “I can tell you that.”
Said Machado: “From here on forward, every day is do or die.”