Padres rebound to salvage final game of series against Diamondbacks

Kevin Acee, The San Diego Union-Tribune on Jun 15, 2025

Published in Baseball

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PHOENIX — The Padres walked away from what was arguably their worst loss of the season on Saturday night with their shoulders slumped.

And then they shrugged.

“We lost,” Manny Machado said after that game. “It’s all good. We’ll be back. Turn the page. … I wouldn’t change anything today. We just lost. It is what it is. But I wouldn’t change. Just keep playing the game.”

So they did.

The Padres on Sunday salvaged the finale of their three-game series against the Diamondbacks with an 8-2 victory.

The difference between Saturday night and Sunday afternoon was that Robert Suarez did not allow five runs in the ninth inning in the matinee.

“Same game,” Jake Cronenworth said Sunday before the Padres departed Chase Field to catch a flight to Los Angeles, where they will play the Dodgers the next four days.

Cronenworth’s two-run home run on the 10th pitch of his at-bat in the third inning, which gave the Padres a 3-0 lead, exemplified the day at the plate for the Padres.

Eight of the nine Padres in the starting lineup got at least one hit. Fernando Tatis Jr. had a season-high four of them, including two doubles, and scored three times. Gavin Sheets was 2 for 4. Elias Díaz was 2 for 4 with a double and a home run. The Padres had 13 hits in all. Their seven extra-base hits were their second most this season and tied for their most in a ballpark other than Coors Field.

“Complete offensive machine, good at-bats,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said. “… At-bat quality was really high today.”

And this time, Padres pitchers did not give much back. Nick Pivetta allowed two runs on two hits and struck out nine batters over his seven innings, and he was backed up by a scoreless inning apiece from Adrián Morejón and Sean Reynolds.

The turnaround in results is a perfect example of why MLB players, managers, coaches and those who make decisions about a team’s personnel must view each game from a step back.

They have to look past the box score and the win column. They must view what is being done behind the numbers.

“You’re going to play your butt off, you can play almost a dang near perfect game and we can lose,” Cronenworth said. “That’s just the way the game is. It’s the way it’s built. You can play a crappy game and win.”

If the process is the right one, it has to be trusted and implemented.

“As a team, we feel like we have been playing good baseball games,” Tatis said. “It’s just a really hard game. … But we have been playing better baseball than we did the last couple weeks.”

During an offensive downturn that lasted most of the past month and saw them rank dead last in the major leagues in most offensive categories, the Padres have been striving to get back to moving the line and not trying to do too much at the plate.

They flooded Saturday’s game with excellent at-bats. They got 11 hits and walked six times. They took a lead, lost it, got it back and then added on. They scored seven runs and led by four with three outs to go.

So they just kept at it Sunday.

And they did it against a good pitcher, the kind that has been highly successful against them lately.

Diamondbacks starter Merrill Kelly threw 32 strikes among his first 39 pitches before walking Gavin Sheets to start the fourth inning and surrendering an RBI double to Xander Bogaerts on a 2-0 pitch. Cronenworth's homer followed to put the Padres up 3-0.

A single by Tatis and double by Luis Arraez made it 4-0 in the fifth.

Pivetta did not allow a baserunner until Josh Naylor walked to start the bottom of the fifth. Eugenio Suarez followed with the Diamondbacks’ first hit, a 437-foot home run to center field to halve the Padres’ lead.

Pivetta finished his day by retiring nine of the 10 batters he faced.

Merrill was done after five innings, and back-to-back doubles by Díaz and Tatis off Anthony DeSclafani made it 5-2 at the start of the seventh inning. Tatis then stole third and scored on a groundout by Machado.

Diaz led off the ninth inning with a homer, Tatis followed with a double and scored on a single by Machado.

“The quality of at-bats through the lineup, obviously Nick’s start was incredible,” Cronenworth said. “The recipe is there. And doing that two days in a row is pretty awesome.”