SAN DIEGO (AP) \u2014 Nick Pivetta pitched five shutout innings in his return from a long stay on the injured list and the San Diego Padres beat the skidding Washington Nationals 3-2 on Monday to keep pace in the National League playoff race.<\/p>\n
Jackson Merrill and Fernando Tatis Jr. both finished with three hits for the Padres, who remained a half-game behind Arizona for the final NL wild card. The Diamondbacks won 5-4 in 10 innings at Kansas City.<\/p>\n
Merrill had two RBI singles that drove in Manny Machado. Tatis scored on Machado’s single in the third. <\/p>\n
Pivetta (2-2) allowed two hits in his fifth start this season and first win since April 1. He was placed on the 15-day injured list April 14 with right elbow inflammation and transferred to the 60-day IL on June 2. The right-hander struck out two and walked none while throwing 63 pitches, 39 for strikes.<\/p>\n
Bradgley Rodriguez and Adrian Morejon each worked a hitless inning before Mason Miller struck out two in a scoreless ninth for his 34th save.<\/p>\n
Nationals starter Jake Irvin (2-9) went 5 2\/3 innings, giving up up three runs and eight hits. He is 0-5 in his past eight starts.<\/p>\n
Dylan Crews hit a two-run homer for Washington, which has lost five straight games.<\/p>\n
San Diego, which took two of three against the New York Yankees at home last weekend, kept the momentum going Monday with timely hitting. <\/p>\n
The Padres scored in the first when Merrill hit a sharp single to right field to drive in Machado, who doubled.<\/p>\n
San Diego added two runs in the third for a 3-0 lead. Machado drove in Tatis from second with a single, and Merrill followed with a single to drive in Tatis.<\/p>\n
Crews connected in the sixth off reliever Kyle Hart.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Padres RHP Casey Mize (5-9, 3.64 ERA) pitches Tuesday night in the middle game of the series. Washington had not announced a scheduled starter.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
\n See AP\u2019s full MLB coverage here\n <\/p>\n
Richard J. Marcus, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN DIEGO (AP) \u2014 Nick Pivetta pitched five shutout innings in his return from a long stay on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":883947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-883946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=883946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/883947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=883946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=883946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=883946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}