PADRES WAKE UP FOR WIN
FRIARS ANSWER BELL AFTER EARLY SLUMBER
The alarm went off at 6 a.m. for Joe Musgrove, who walked down to get some coffee and found out it wasn’t ready yet.
“I beat the coffee,” he said later. The Padres starting pitcher for Sunday’s game against the Braves eventually did get his brew and later downed a Red Bull, too. He took the early bus to Truist Park. And it was early — 7:15 ET and 4:15 for the bodies and minds of the team from San Diego. He made his way to the field to warm up and felt ready to go.
“I was feeling like, ‘I’m way more awake than anybody out here today,’ ” Musgrove recalled. “And I started throwing, and my body didn’t feel the same. It took me a minute to get things going.”
Him and almost everyone else.
A few innings, in fact, were required for the visitors from the West Coast to actually perform like they were awake in the earliest game most of them had played in many years. And then they played extra innings
By the end, they looked as if they’d installed an espresso machine in the dugout, as they ran all around the Braves and made the early rising worth it with a 7-3 victory earned in 11 innings.
All three games in the series against the defending World Series champions were decided with late runs — the Padres winning Friday’s opener 11-6 by breaking a
tie in the seventh and pouring it on the in the ninth, the Braves winning Saturday with four runs in the bottom of the eighth after surrendering four runs in the top of the eighth.
“It’s just two teams just slugging back and forth at each other, back and forth,” said Padres acting manager Ryan Christenson. “It was just good to see these guys continue to fight.”
Wil Myers made a costly error
in the second inning, and Ha-seong Kim ran the Padres out of a rally in the seventh.
Kim drove in the first run in the final inning with a double and scored the second one by dashing home from third on Jurickson Profar's grounder, diving deftly to the side and reaching in to touch the plate ahead of a throw that beat him.
“I was really happy,” Kim said. “Especially since the at-bat before, I hit a double and I got out by trying to steal third base. So I was extra motivated. I was extra focused to give my team the lead.”
The Padres added the final two runs on Myers' broken-bat single over a drawnin infield. A Braves error aided them along the way.
“Just a lot of battle there,” Myers said. “It's always nice to have comefrom-behind wins, especially late in the game, extra innings and on the road as well. So it was it was big for us to come out there and be able to battle back.”
Taylor Rogers pitched a perfect 11th.
That was after Nabil Crismatt pitched two scoreless innings in an uncommon situation for the team's long reliever.
Crismatt struck out all three batters he faced in the ninth inning and got through the first out in the bottom of the 10th by throwing to third base on a leadoff grounder to get William Contreras, who had started the half-inning on second. Crismatt struck out Travis Demeritte and, after Matt Olson singled, ended the inning on Austin Riley's line drive directly at shortstop Jake Cronenworth.
Crismatt came into Sunday with a 1.59 ERA in 17 innings, mostly in low- and medium-leverage situations. But Steven Wilson was unavailable Sunday after pitching the previous two days, and Luis Garcia had pitched in the eighth.
“I love it! I love it!” Crismatt said afterward. “I'm not afraid to pitch. I am a guy that I compete. This is a game that I really care (about) a lot. So I just try to come here every day and prepare myself and try to find my best version.”
The game's first pitch was thrown at 11:37 a.m. ET, a product of the game being streamed by Peacock.
For a while, it appeared
Dansby Swanson was the only morning person on the field. He was certainly the Braves' caffeine while the Padres effectively hit the snooze button a few times.
Swanson alertly ran home on an error in the second inning and hit a two-run homer to give the Braves a 3-0 lead in the third.
The Padres got their first hit and scored with help from an error in the fifth inning and tied the game 3-3 with two runs on a couple of hits and another Braves error in the seventh inning.
It was a new ballgame, and it just so happened that it was 1:30 p.m. ET when Myers scored the tying run. That is just about when
most of the rest of the MLB schedule was getting underway.
After Swanson's homer, the Braves did not have a hit until Olson's two-out single in the 10th.
Until Myers was placed on second base to start the 10th inning, the Padres' only baserunner after Austin Nola drove in Myers to tie the game in the seventh was Kim.
But he followed his oneout double in the eighth inning by getting picked off trying to steal third base with Padres RBI leader Eric Hosmer at the plate.
Musgrove went six innings and allowed the three runs (two earned). The
Braves had just four hits, and Musgrove doubled his season total by walking three but still found his way through the six innings, the minimum he has thrown in all seven of his starts.
“The grit that they've shown, these guys are engaged right now,” Christenson said. “They're feeling on a roll. We're feeling everything's kind of clicking with the offense . ... We've got some momentum right now. Guys are continuing to push the envelope, which is what Kim was trying to do, playing aggressive. And (he) had some big knocks there at the end.”