The Padres didn’t just beat Houston in the finale. They emptied the barrel.
San Diego rolled past the Astros 7-2 last night behind a home run barrage that came from all over the lineup, with Fernando Tatis Jr., Jackson Merrill, Gavin Sheets and Austin Hays all going deep as the Padres took the series win.
Houston grabbed an early lead in the second inning when Dalton Varsho turned a pitch from Padres starter Randy Vasquez into a two-run homer. San Diego answered right away, though, as Merrill matched it with a solo shot in the same inning to keep the game from slipping away.
From there, the Padres started stacking loud swings. Tatis broke the game open in the fourth with a three-run blast off Cristian Javier, flipping a 2-1 deficit into a 4-2 San Diego lead. Sheets added a solo homer in the fifth to make it 5-2, and Hays put the game out of reach with a two-run shot in the eighth.
Vasquez settled in after the early damage and gave San Diego five innings of two-run ball. The bullpen handled the rest, with Kyle Hart, Bradgley Rodriguez and Jeremiah Estrada combining to keep Houston off the board over the final four innings. Rodriguez worked two scoreless frames in that stretch.
The win gave the Padres their second victory of the series after dropping the first two, and Craig Stammen pointed to what happens when Tatis, Merrill and Manny Machado are all swinging well at the same time.
“It takes our team to another level, when [Tatis] can kind of put us on his back and be like, ‘Hey, I got you guys,’” said Stammen in a piece written by AJ Cassavell of MLB.com. “I’ve just seen it in his eye here lately that he’s got that feeling that he can do it.”
Merrill has been doing that too, and the power is now starting to show up from Tatis as well. Earlier, Machado had carried the club for a stretch, and Tatis spoke about how important the surge has been.
Sheets, meanwhile, delivered one of the more encouraging swings of the night. He has been slumping lately after his early homer burst while dealing with plantar fasciitis for much of the past month, but he broke through with a big homer and helped fuel the rout.
“It’s nice to get in on the fun,” Sheets said. “That’s the fun thing about this team.
I feel like I was going in April and May when some guys weren’t. We pick each other up.
That’s what good teams do.”
In Other News...
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For the Padres, the appeal is obvious: add a bat with enough track record to help balance out a lineup that has too often looked vulnerable in those matchups. Hays arrives with the kind of background teams tend to trust when they need immediate help, and his fit will now be judged by whether he can provide the right-handed punch San Diego has been missing. [Read more 🡒]
Padres Move On From Veteran Arm As Rotation Pressure Builds
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Jackson Merrill Is Giving The Padres Exactly What They Needed
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His contribution in Houston was exactly the kind of timely production the Padres have been searching for, as he drove in runs and launched his 17th homer of the season. For a team trying to keep pace in the playoff chase, Merrills resurgence is more than a hot streak, it is the kind of development that can change the tone of the stretch run. [Read more 🡒]