SAN DIEGO -- It’s that time of year.
Sometime around the sixth inning on Tuesday night, the scoreboard at Petco Park flashed a new final: The Diamondbacks had won in Kansas City. The Padres, at the time, were trailing by three runs.
“Whoever tells you they’re not looking -- they’re lying,” Manny Machado would later say. “We knew that Arizona won. And we needed to win this game bad.”
They got it. The Padres staged a relentless four-run rally in the bottom of the eighth inning and emerged with a pivotal 5-4 victory over the Nationals. In the process, they kept pace with the Diamondbacks in the race for the final National League Wild Card spot. Arizona maintained its half-game lead, but the two teams remain tied in the loss column.
Here’s some takeaways from Petco Park:
A ferocious rally … when they desperately needed it
For seven innings, the Padres struggled to get much of anything going against a Nationals bullpen game. They mustered just one hit through the first six. They stranded a runner at third in the seventh, then fell behind, 4-1, on Andrés Chaparro’s pinch-hit home run.
The Padres were down, but they weren’t out.
After loading the bases with a trio of walks, Austin Hays got one back with a sacrifice fly, before Machado tied the game with a two-run single. A couple of batters later, Luis Campusano’s broken-bat bloop landed in no-man’s land in right-center field, plating the go-ahead run.
The Padres needed this rally in the worst way -- especially considering the stakes in the current playoff picture.
“That whole inning, everyone had unselfish at-bats,” Machado said. “Great at-bats as a team, as a group to lead to that victory tonight.”
Morejon steps up
The Padres led after eight innings, and the lights at Petco Park went out. But it wasn’t Mason Miller who emerged. It was Adrian Morejon.
Miller has been taxed heavily lately. Of course, so has Morejon. But he was just a bit fresher. (Morejon had pitched only one inning in Friday’s victory, while Miller went two.) So the Padres called on Morejon for his third straight game and his fourth appearance in five.
“We were all on the same page,” Morejon said through interpreter Pedro Gutierrez. “If the situation were to arise, I would be ready to go. I’m ready for whenever I’m needed and whenever the team needs me.”
They needed him Tuesday, and he delivered. Morejon retired the Nats in order on just seven pitches -- the type of efficiency that has made him available so often this season.
“That,” Stammen said, “was one of his more dominant innings that he’s pitched all year.”
This was the version of Mize the Padres traded for
His final line is harsh. But Casey Mize was mostly excellent on Tuesday night. His splitter was nasty; he induced whiffs with nine of the 15 that he threw. His command was solid. He struck out seven, his most in a Padres uniform.
Before a fateful sixth inning, the only run Mize allowed came on Yohandy Morales’ solo homer. That came on a sinker nearly a foot off the inside corner that Morales turned on and hit to the Western Metal Building.
“He had complete control of the game,” Stammen said. “One of his better outings for the Padres. He’s going to be a very good starter for us -- and hopefully a playoff starter for us.”
Maybe the only downside of Mize’s outing was that he was so sharp and so efficient that Stammen was convinced to let him return for the sixth. Mize would put two men aboard, before departing. Both of those runs would come around to score on Brady House’s two-run double off Randy Vásquez.
Afterward, Stammen was self-critical of his decision to lift Mize for Vásquez, who has only recently transitioned to a bullpen role (and has rarely entered games mid-inning). Lefty Yuki Matsui was also loose and available to face the lefty-hitting CJ Abrams on deck.
“If I had to do it all over again, I probably would’ve done it a little bit differently,” Stammen said. “I probably would’ve left [Mize] in and had Yuki ready for Abrams. … Could’ve went either way.”
Another Manny milestone
Machado already holds the Padres’ home run record. But he’s probably not getting anywhere close to first place on the rest of the franchise’s offensive leaderboards. Tony Gwynn has a pretty good grasp on most of those records.
But Machado is solidifying himself as the next best hitter -- possibly even the next best player -- in franchise history. On Tuesday night, he moved past Garry Templeton into sole possession of second place on the franchise hits list.
“It’s obviously an honor,” Machado said. “It’s an honor to put on this uniform every single day and to look up there and be next to Tony for the rest of my career -- I think that’s pretty special.”
And that was before he delivered his clutch two-run, game-tying single in the bottom of the eighth inning -- after an outstanding eight-pitch at-bat. That was his 1,137th hit with the Padres, now two more than Templeton.
Maybe the most remarkable part of that number? He’s still got more than 2,000 to go before he reaches Gwynn’s 3,141.