The Padres have put themselves in position to finish off a sweep on Sunday afternoon, and the timing couldn’t be much better. San Diego enters the finale with 86 wins, 69 losses, and a firm grip on the No. 5 seed in the National League playoff race after taking the first two games from Miami in very different ways.
Friday’s opener was a clean, convincing 8-2 win. Nick Pivetta handled five strong innings, and the offense blew the game open with a six-run fifth.
Saturday was messier, but the result was the same: the Padres dug out of an early 5-1 hole and pulled out an extra-inning victory on Ethan Salas’ first career walk-off hit. That makes it 12 wins in their last 13 games.
San Diego will try to keep that roll going behind Walker Buehler, who has had back-to-back odd outings. Against the Rockies this past week, he gave up two runs on seven hits and struck out one over 4.2 innings. In his start the week before against Washington, he was lifted in the third inning after allowing two runs.
Even with those bumps, Buehler has been a major stabilizer for the Padres’ rotation this season. He has made 30 starts, thrown 143.1 innings, and posted a 4.58 ERA. He also already faced Miami on July 26, when he allowed two earned runs - three total - over 5.1 innings while striking out seven.
The Marlins will counter with Sandy Alcantara, their ace, even though he’s coming off a strange stretch of his own. He pitched in relief four days ago against the Diamondbacks and picked up the save, then started against Arizona two days earlier and worked five innings while allowing four runs with six strikeouts.
For the season, Alcantara is 13-10 with a 3.84 ERA across a league-leading 206 innings.
First pitch between the Padres and Marlins is set for Sunday, Sept. 20 at 1:10 p.m. PT/4:10 p.m.
ET. The game will air on Padres.TV and in the MLB app, with radio coverage on 97.3 The Fan in English and XEMO 860 in Spanish.
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Jose Fernandezs Final Marlins Start Still Hits Miami Fans Hard
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Fernandezs death in a boating accident five days later turned that outing into something far more painful for the organization and its fans, a last glimpse of a pitcher who seemed built for the citys biggest stages. His home numbers only sharpen the sense of what was lost, with a 29-2 record and a 1.49 ERA in 42 starts in Miami, the kind of dominance that made every appearance feel like an event and every memory still hit hard. [Read more 🡒]