Sheets homers twice in Padres 8-1 win over Giants

SAN DIEGO - Finishing the game with four home runs, including two by outfielder Gavin Sheets, the San Diego Padres routed the San Francisco Giants, 8-1, on Wednesday at Petco Park. 

After living through a four game losing skid, the Padres have now won back-to-back to go ahead in the four game series against the Giants. Scoring nine runs during their losing streak, the club produced 12 runs through the last 18 innings with 17 hits. 

"We win a lot of games in a lot of different ways," Padres manager Mike Shildt said. "We've won a lot of our games with our pitching and defense and the timely hitting, which is a great recipe. But I feel like our offense is dictating games in the last couple of weeks to three weeks, and it was on display tonight."  

In this game specifically, this is the type of outing people expect out of the Friars, who made numerous offensive additions at the trade deadline even with players like Jackson Merrill and Xander Bogaerts missing from the lineup. If the team can continue to string along efforts like tonight, leading into their weekend showdown against the Dodgers, it won't be long until they back on top in NL West. 

"I think that was the goal of the deadline," Gavin Sheets said. "I think that's what we did. We have an extremely deep team. It doesn't matter who's in there, what opportunity is. I think we trust everybody in this clubhouse and offensively, defensively, bullpen there''s not a guy in any situation that we don't want up there." 

The opening inning of the third game had a few thrilling moments to kick it off. 

During the top half, Rafael Devers sent out a 78 mph sweeper out to right-field, which looked to be the 25th homer until Fernando Tatis Jr. made another unbelievable catch over the wall, making it look routine. Then in the bottom half, Tatis Jr. got aboard with a lead-off double down the third baseline, and later scored on Ryan O'Hearn's single to center-field. 

"You're talking about right off the giddy again," Shildt said. "Sometimes that's what it takes to eliminate a little streak that you don't like is a great play or something out of the ordinary."

"That's kind of my thing, I love at-bats like that," O'Hearn said about his 10 pitch at-bat. "Just wasting pitches and you know, especially early in the game to get the starter to throw as many pitches as possible... I know how much they hate that." 

The Padres continued to attack Roupp with productive at-bats early on in the following frame after Sheets labeled a solo shot to right-field, which unleashed 107 mph off his bat for a career high 16th homer of his 2025 campaign. 

Manny Machado joined the party in the third inning, launching his 21st home run, which reached 425 ft out to center-field. 

Following Machado's homer and O'Hearn reaching on base for a second time with a walk, Roupp had to get carted off the field after absorbing a ball off his right leg at 96 mph when going against Ramón Laureano. 

The Giants turned to left-hander Joey Lucchesi and he received a warm welcome after giving up a three-run homer to Sheets (17) for his second of the game to almost the exact same spot out in right-field. 

Later in the seventh inning, O'Hearn recorded his 16th home run of the season (third on the Padres) to center field to make it 7-1. The Padres scored their 8th and final run following an RBI single by Tatis Jr that scored Freddy Fermin.

Left-hander JP Sears made his second start as a member of the Padres following a shaky debut earlier this month where he allowed five earned runs on 10 hits through five innings against the Diamondbacks. 

This time around, Sears rebounded, putting up a solid outing in his first credited win in San Diego and was in command through six innings. On 93 pitches, the former Athletic allowed one run, four hits, one walk with a pair of strikeouts. 

Sears' only run came in the during the fourth inning on Casey Schmitt's home run center-field.  

The Padres went to Wandy Peralta, Yuki Matsui and David Morgan and combined for three scoreless innings with no hits and three strikeouts. 

With his RBI single in the first inning, O'Hearn has now registered an RBI in four consecutive games (6 RBI) and has hit safely in 12 of his last 16 starts. 

With Dodgers dropping their game to the Rockies, the Padres now stand one game behind for first place in the division, and still hold the second Wild Card spot by 3.5 games over the Mets. Depending on how things finish between the two division foes, they can find themselves in the same position as weekend up in Los Angeles. 

"Last weekend it didn't go our way and the first game in the homestand," Tatis said. "But we're right there, we're close, We're really close, and we're just not gonna back down that way. We're just gonna show up and play our best baseball that we can."