A night that was slowly rolling toward a loss and a lost game in the standings changed with a bang.<\/p>\n
That is, another loud bang off the bat of Jackson Merrill, whose two-run homer in the seventh inning flipped the lead and ended up being the decisive blow in the Padres\u2019 3-2 victory over the Brewers.<\/p>\n
Monday\u2019s victory over the team whose 74-45 record is still 1\u00bd games better than any other MLB club, was the Padres\u2019 15th win in their past 23 games.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re playing great,\u201d Merrill said. \u201cWe\u2019re playing together, and we\u2019re playing as a family. I love that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not at all coincidentally, that run started on the same date Merrill began a seismic resurgence.<\/p>\n
Monday\u2019s home run was his major league-leading ninth since July 19, and his 1.146 OPS in that span also leads the majors.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just playing baseball,\u201d said Merrill, who was batting .214 with a .613 OPS on July 18. \u201cI know how to play. Just being myself out there, having fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
His blast followed Ty France\u2019s one-out single, which ended a run of 13 consecutive batters retired by Brewers starting pitcher Logan Henderson.<\/p>\n
The splendid night of pitching seemed for a time as if it would be the only good news for the Padres against the team with the major leagues\u2019 best record.<\/p>\n
And that would have been no small thing, as one of the starters they traded for last week pitching in the manner they expected will matter as they continue to fight for a playoff spot.<\/p>\n
Casey Mize allowed two runs in six innings, both on Christian Yelich\u2019s home run in the second inning.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was nice to provide some quality, turn it over to the pen to get a few zeros,\u201d Mize said after rebounding from a career-worst start in his Padres debut last Wednesday. \u201c\u2026 I\u2019m just trying to keep us in it. So pretty pleased with it overall.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yuki Matsui, who pitched a 1-2-3 seventh innings just before Merrill\u2019s blast, got the win. Adrian Morej\u00f3n pitched the eighth, and Mason Miller finished it off with help from Fermin, who threw out Brandon Lockridge trying to steal second base for the final out.<\/p>\n
The victory kept the Padres a game behind the Diamondbacks and Phillies in the race for the final two National League wild card spots.<\/p>\n
The comeback could not have been possible if Mize had not shut down the Brewers over his final four innings.<\/p>\n
The eight runs he allowed (in 3\u2153 innings) in Phoenix five days earlier were the most he had ever surrendered in 104 major league starts.<\/p>\n
His only real blemishes Monday were the one-out walk he issued to William Contreras in the second inning and the fastball he laid in the heart of the plate on his next pitch that Yelich hit beyond the wall in left field.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not always what happens to you but what you do after that,\u201d Padres manager Craig Stammen said. \u201cAnd he put his nose to the grindstone this week and got ready for a start. Gave up a home run. Could have derailed his day, but he stuck with it. Showed his toughness. Got us through six innings and kept us in the ball game.\u201d<\/p>\n
France led off the bottom of the second with a line drive just over the wall in left field.<\/p>\n
The Padres squandered a chance to tie the game in the third inning when Fermin lined a double to left field and Sung-Mun Song sacrificed him to third before Fernando Tatis Jr. hit a hard groundout to shortstop and Jake Cronenworth struck out.<\/p>\n
From there. Henderson (6-2, 2.88) dominated the Padres with a low-90s fastball he put almost exactly where he wanted almost all the time and a changeup batters couldn\u2019t help but chase.<\/p>\n
He had made it through six innings on 77 pitches, and when Manny Machado led off the seventh with a pop fly out, Monday became the longest of Henderson\u2019s 16 career starts.<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old right-hander yielded France\u2019s leadoff homer in the second inning, a leadoff double to Freddy Fermin in the third and then didn\u2019t allow a baserunner until France\u2019s grounder through the left side in the seventh.<\/p>\n
Merrill then launched a 1-1 changeup Henderson left a little too high 431 feet to straightaway center.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, the way he\u2019s taking at-bats,\u201d Stammen said, \u201che can hit about anything out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A night that was slowly rolling toward a loss and a lost game in the standings changed with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,1334,74,76,75,2611,127,1696],"class_list":["post-429506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-latest-headlines","tag-mlb","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-sports","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429506","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=429506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}