The Padres are slugging now.<\/p>\n
And they did not wait for dramatic home runs at the end on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
The drama was on the other side of the ball.<\/p>\n
Jason Adam came out of the bullpen to get the final out with the bases loaded as the Padres secured a 9-5 victory over the Colorado Rockies at Petco Park.<\/p>\n
Two early home runs brought the Padres back from a big early deficit.<\/p>\n
Manny Machado\u2019s two-run homer in the third inning and Ram\u00f3n Laureano\u2019s three-run homer in the fourth did most of the work as the Padres turned a 4-0 deficit into a 6-4 lead before they cruised to their fourth straight victory and seventh in eight games.<\/p>\n
Saturday was the fifth consecutive game in which the Padres had at least one home run; they have five over the past two nights.<\/p>\n
They began the season with five home runs in their first 10 games and went six games without one in that opening span.<\/p>\n
They ranked 26th among MLB\u2019s 30 teams in slugging percentage to that point. They have moved up 13 spots since.<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s explosives followed two straight nights that ended with walk-off home runs \u2014 a 12th-inning grand slam by Xander Bogaerts for a 7-3 victory on Thursday and Gavin Sheets\u2019 three-run homer in the ninth inning for a 5-2 victory on Friday.<\/p>\n
The Padres never trailed in either of those games.<\/p>\n
They got down quick Saturday, as La Costa Canyon High School graduate Mickey Moniak hit a two-run homer in the first inning and followed Edouard Julien\u2019s solo homer in the third inning with his own solo homer in the third.<\/p>\n
Saturday was the second time in Germ\u00e1n M\u00e1rquez\u2019s three starts that the Padres trailed 4-0.<\/p>\n
Before working five scoreless innings on Monday in Pittsburgh, M\u00e1rquez allowed two home runs and yielded four runs in all over four innings in his Padres debut on March 31.<\/p>\n
Saturday, he was facing the team for which he made his first 200 starts. And the Rockies gave Petco Park a bit of a Coors Field feel, just without all the singles and doubles.<\/p>\n
Because when he was not surrendering home runs, M\u00e1rquez was actually fairly efficiently making outs.<\/p>\n
He was at 71 pitches after four innings; 51 of those came in the two innings in which he surrendered two runs.<\/p>\n
M\u00e1rquez struck out five straight and then retired one more batter after Moniak\u2019s first home run. Then Julien swatted a home run the other way to left field, M\u00e1rquez got another out and Moniak drove his second home run over the wall in right-center field.<\/p>\n
That gave Moniak his second multi-homer game this season and his second at Petco Park in two seasons.<\/p>\n
Down just a run after a walk by Laureano, a single by Tatis, an RBI groundout by Jackson Merrill and Machado\u2019s blast against Rockies starter Ryan Feltner, M\u00e1rquez got through his second 10-pitch inning in the fourth.<\/p>\n
Miguel Andujar\u2019s double and a walk by Freddy Fermin with one out preceded Laureano\u2019s two-out drive to the left field seats that gave the Padres the lead.<\/p>\n
Fermin helped M\u00e1rquez through a two-walk fifth inning, which got him in position for his second straight win, by throwing out Jake McCarthy trying to steal second base.<\/p>\n
Wandy Peralta retired the Rockies in order in the sixth. Ron Marinaccio took over with one out and two runners on in the seventh and got an inning-ending double play. He allowed a run in the eighth before Bradley Rodriguez loaded the bases on a double and two walks in the ninth and needed Adam\u2019s assistance.<\/p>\n
Adam retired Ezequiel Tovar on a pop-up for the quick save.<\/p>\n
The Padres had added on in the sixth, scoring a run on an error and three consecutive walks by Zach Agnos and a double by Merrill against Brennan Bernadino.<\/p>\n
They almost had another home run, too.<\/p>\n
The Padres responded in the bottom of the first inning with a double, a walk and a drive by Nick Castellanos to left field that was caught above the eight-foot wall by Jordan Beck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Padres are slugging now. And they did not wait for dramatic home runs at the end on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,1334,74,76,75,2611,127,1696],"class_list":{"0":"post-263495","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-latest-headlines","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-san-diego","11":"tag-san-diego-headlines","12":"tag-san-diego-news","13":"tag-san-diego-padres","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-top-stories-sdut"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}