Jake Cronenworth hit a pair of two-run homers and drove in five runs for the San Diego Padres, who beat the Miami Marlins 7-3 on Sunday to move closer to clinching their third straight postseason berth. <\/p>\n
Fernando Tatis Jr. hit his 25th homer for the Padres, who won for the 13th time in 14 games and swept the Marlins for the second time this season.<\/p>\n
San Diego reduced its magic number to two for earning a wild-card spot.<\/p>\n
The Padres and Cubs remain tied at 87-69 for the top wild-card spot with six games to go, although Chicago holds the tiebreaker. Philadelphia stayed one game back. <\/p>\n
The top wild-card team will host a best-of-three opening series. The Cubs beat the Padres 2-1 in the wild-card round last year in Chicago.<\/p>\n
Cronenworth lofted a two-run shot into the home run porch in the right-field corner off Sandy Alcantara (13-11) with two outs in the second. <\/p>\n
He connected again to right off Bradley Blalock with two outs in the eighth, his seventh. It was his second career multihomer game.<\/p>\n
Walker Buehler took a one-hitter and a 4-0 lead into the seventh before allowing Javier Sanoja’s three-run homer to left with two outs, his 10th.<\/p>\n
That was it for Buehler (9-6), who allowed three runs and three hits while striking out six and walking two in a season-high 6 2\/3 innings. He retired 11 straight at one point.<\/p>\n
Tatis homered into the Padres bullpen in left-center off Blalock leading off the seventh. It’s his fourth career 25-homer season. <\/p>\n
Cronenworth and Samad Taylor hit consecutive RBI singles in the fourth.<\/p>\n
Alcantara allowed four runs and eight hits in six innings, struck out three and walked one.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Marlins RHP Janson Junk (6-9, 4.50 ERA) is scheduled to start Tuesday night in the opener of a three-game series at the Chicago Cubs.<\/p>\n
The Padres haven’t named a starter for Tuesday night’s series opener at the Los Angeles Dodgers.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
See AP\u2019s full MLB coverage here<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jake Cronenworth hit a pair of two-run homers and drove in five runs for the San Diego Padres,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":855184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,23559,2328,99],"class_list":["post-855183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-padres","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/855184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}