SAN DIEGO – “I'm pretty confident within a week or so we'll be talking and be like 'Man, Manny (Machado)'s got eight RBIs in the last five days,’” Mike Shildt had said on Sunday.
The Padres manager's words seemed even more sage after the San Diego third baseman drove in three runs in an 8-4 win over the San Francisco Giants on Thursday afternoon at Petco Park.
Machado finished 2-for-4 with a run scored and a stolen base, giving him five driven in over the past three days after recording one RBI over the previous 16 games. The Padres (72-56) blew the game open with six runs in the fifth inning where they batted around, en route taking the final three of the four-game series.
"This team's equipped to beat you in a lot of different ways and was on display again last night, it was on display today," Shild said. "I loved our approaches with runners in scoring position, played better, (Xander Bogaerts) with a sac fly, I thought that was fantastic (and) just loved the way we were going about our at bats there."
The Brown and Gold went 6-for-12 with runners in scoring position for the afternoon, following a 3-for-7 performance on Wednesday after going 3-for-17 over the first two games of the set. Meanwhile the Padres pitching staff allowed 1-for-6 for the day, 2-for-18 in the series and have held opponents to hitting .144 (15-for-104) in RISP situations over the past 15 games.
An uncharacteristic off-inning defensively in the third saw the Giants (61-67) scored a pair of runs, then San Diego took the lead in the fifth thanks to an early error by third baseman Casey Schmitt and fielding error by right fielder Luis Matos while ultimately generating six hits and a walk.
The first two runs of the inning came off the errors on Freddy Fermin’s bunt single, then Machado followed Fernando Tatis Jr. bunting for a hit by lacing a double to left center to score both base runners. San Diego bunted the ball three straight at bats, with Luis Arraez also dropping a sacrifice bunt. Bogaerts also added one of his two RBIs for the game in the inning, with Ramón Laureano also knocking a run home.
"We did a couple nice bunts, we know we did a lot of that in the early first half, we haven't done it much lately," Bogaerts said. "I think Fermin may actually be our best bunter, bunts for hits too —it's crazy. Tatis is right behind him but I think Fermin is sneaky really good at that."
Starter Dylan Cease pitched into the sixth inning, but gave up back-to-back home runs to Rafael Devers and Willy Adames and was lifted after pitching five innings and allowing four runs on six hits. He struck out seven and walked two in his sixth win, before being replaced by Jeremiah Estrada.
"It felt good, (I) mixed well and gave us a chance to win, which is always great," Cease said. "I think I just regrouped and had a good process coming in and stuck to it."
The bullpen combined to hold the Giants off the board again, as Estrada threw 1 ⅓ innings, Adrian Morejon one inning, Mason Miller ⅔ an inning and Robert Suarez took the ninth in a non-save situation.
After being retired in order the first time through the order, Tatis got the offense going by leading off the fourth with a double and Arraez followed with a single.
Machado then battled through an eight-pitch at bat before chipping a low and outside slider to shallow left center field for the first run of the inning, and two batters later Bogaerts tied the game with an RBI sacrifice fly.
The Giants had opened the scoring by taking advantage of fielding miscues by the Padres, as Luis Matos led off with a triple when Tatis and Laureano had a miscommunication fielding the fly ball in right center. After an Andrew Knizner hit took an odd bounce away from a charging Tatis for an RBI double, Jung Hoo Lee reached on a Jake Cronenworth error that brought home the second run.
"They save a lot more than they give up, so it's my job just to execute pitches and give us a chance to win, really," Cease said.
In the midst of a 13-game stretch against NL West competition, the Padres have taken six of ten thus far and improved to 22-17 overall when facing divisional foes.
"Today was one of the games I enjoyed the most this year out of this team, because we didn't start off with our 'A' game and that's going to happen, you're just going to have games like that," Shildt said. "But the championship clubs...they regroup really quickly and so, down early it wasn't as pretty as we liked, wasn't as clean as we liked and it was like 'Nah, lets kick it into gear this game,' and we did and that's what really good teams do."
San Diego remained a game back of the division-leading Los Angeles Dodgers, who are next on the docket to close out a seven-game homestand. The Brown and Gold are also a game back of the top Wild Card spot holder Chicago Cubs, who dropped their finale against the Milwaukee Brewers after taking the first three.
Yu Darvish (2-3, 5.97 ERA) will start for the Padres against Blake Snell (3-1, 1.80 ERA) in the first game of the final regular season series against the Dodgers, with first pitch scheduled for 6:40 p.m. on Friday at Petco Park.
This story was updated at 5:16 p.m.