ANAHEIM -- Ramón Laureano and Fernando Tatis Jr. drove in a run apiece in the eighth and ninth innings, and that was enough for the Padres on Saturday night at Angel Stadium.
A day after their eight-game winning streak was snapped, San Diego bounced back with a 4-1 victory in Anaheim. Here’s some reaction:
Padres win it late -- like they’re supposed to
Germán Márquez matched zeros with Angels left-hander Yusei Kikuchi, and by the seventh inning, Saturday’s game became a battle of the two bullpens.
The Padres will always like their chances when that’s the case.
“We built this team with a strong bullpen,” said manager Craig Stammen. “It should be a reason why we win some games.”
Left-hander Adrian Morejon recorded the final out of the sixth inning and worked a scoreless seventh as well. Jason Adam allowed a run in the eighth, but Stammen stuck with him with the tying and go-ahead runs aboard. Adam got Jo Adell to ground out to end the inning.
Closer Mason Miller allowed two baserunners in the ninth, doubling his total for the season. But he nailed down his seventh save and kept his scoreless streak alive at 31 2/3 innings.
“We felt good about our bullpen,” Stammen said. “And we felt good about our offense at the end of games.”
The Angels didn’t have quite the same firepower in relief. Laureano and Tatis hit a pair of seeing-eye RBI singles in the eighth. The same duo knocked in runs in the ninth -- Laureano via sac fly and Tatis with a single to center.
A three-run lead with a closer like this one? Heck, any late lead with this bullpen?
“Game over,” Tatis said.
Merrill does it again
Jackson Merrill’s third home-run robbery of the season wasn’t quite as acrobatic as the first two. In March, he took one away from Detroit’s Kevin McGonigle, one of the highlights of Opening Weekend. Then, earlier this week, he robbed Julio Rodríguez by going WAY over the center-field wall at Petco Park.
But Saturday’s robbery of Yoán Moncada was impressive in its own right. The ball hung in the air long enough that Merrill had to contend with Tatis, who was seeking a robbery himself in right. Merrill avoided Tatis, reached barely over the wall and took it back.
“If it wasn’t him, it was going to be me,” Tatis said with a laugh.
Said Stammen: “With those two guys out there, I felt good about a ball being in the air that long possibly being caught.”
It’s not quite Adell, the Angels outfielder who robbed three in one game. But the season is barely three weeks old, and Merrill has now robbed three home runs.
“Just a normal day in center,” Merrill said. “Just see the ball, go up, try and go catch it.”
Now seems like a good time to remind you: Merrill had never played the outfield in his life until the Padres asked him to try it in the spring of 2024, ahead of his rookie season. Merrill acclimated seamlessly to the position -- and seems to be getting better every day.
Márquez figures it out
Make no mistake: Márquez was getting lucky early. Merrill’s home-run robbery was not the only loud-contact out of the first few innings.
And then, well, Márquez is a 10-year veteran. He figured things out on the fly. Sometime around the bottom of the fourth inning, Márquez settled into a groove. He struck out two in the fourth and three in the fifth. His curveball started dancing.
“I was kind of hard-hit early,” Márquez said. “As the game went on, I just started making pitches.”
By the time Mike Trout blooped a two-out double to right in the sixth, Márquez had retired the last nine hitters.
In a tie game, with the lefty-hitting Nolan Schanuel due up, that would be all for Márquez. Stammen called for left-hander Adrian Morejon to retire Schanuel and keep the game scoreless.
“Got out of those [jams], and then he started cruising right after that,” Stammen said. “Bunch of strikeouts, got into the sixth. We really could’ve left him in there. But we just decided we’ve got those aces down in the bullpen.”
Nonetheless, this was an extremely encouraging outing from Márquez. It’s no secret just how thin the Padres are at the back of their rotation. Márquez’s guile and ability to piece it together on the mound at least makes him a viable back-end candidate.