SAN DIEGO – At 6:41 p.m. the first pitch left San Diego starter Stephen Kolek’s hand.
Seconds later it was in the seats in right field for a lead off home run the put the Padres behind for the entirety of the night in a 5-1 loss to the Seattle Mariners in the first official game of the Vedder Cup on Friday at Petco Park.
Kolek got touched up for three home runs, the most by a Padres (27-16) pitcher in a game this season, as AL West leading Seattle (24-19) sat on his fastball and knocked two of their round trippers and five of their eight hits against him on the mid-90 MPH pitches.
“(He) made some mistakes, they made him pay for it,” said manager Mike Shildt. “The one walk before the homer was really the only self-inflicted thing, (he) put some balls over the plate and guys made him pay for it… other than that he was good, efficient on the attack.”
J.P. Crawford cracked the first pitch fastball out to right field for his fourth home run of the season and 14th lead off long ball of the year. The other depth charges came when Rowdy Tellez squared up a low sweeper in the fourth, blasting it out to right for a two-run home run and then in the sixth Cam Raleigh crunched a four-seam fastball with a man on.
“They had three good swings: ambushed the first one, hit a mistake on the second one, and I thought I executed the third one but he put a good swing on it,” Kolek said. “Maybe we can look back on some of the sequences, they obviously probably had a plan coming in against me.”
Rookie Logan Evans had the longest start of his early MLB career for Seattle, shutting out the Padres through six innings with seven hits, three strikeouts and a walk to earn his second win of the season. Ranked as the No. 10 prospect in the Mariners system by MLB Pipeline, Evans allowed only two runners to reach third and stranded a runner in scoring position in each of the second through fifth innings.
“The approaches were good overall…(Evans) pitched well, threw strikes, balls went at some people and we couldn’t get it over the fence,” Shildt said.
The Padres couldn’t convert until the ninth, when Jake Cronenworth stroked his second extra base hit of the night to double home Gavin Sheets. It was the second consecutive game Cronenworth has had extra base hits — he has four of his eight multi-baggers for the season since returning to the lineup on May 9.
“(Cronenworth) looks really on time, good balance, everything looks like it’s working through the zone with his barrel, staying on the baseball and driving the ball to different parts of the field,” Shildt said.
Otherwise it was a night of misfires with men on, as the Brown and Gold went 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position and five of their eight runners left of base were stranded in scoring position.
Kolek finished with four strikeouts and a walk to go with the five runs and eight hits allowed in taking his first loss of the season. He used the sweeper most across his 83 pitches, with the 27% rate well above the 3% he had thrown it over his first two starts.
“(It was) the scouting report against these guys, when they come out swinging against the fastball it tends to make you actually use your arsenal,” Kolek said. “It felt good today, messed up on one of them and Rowdy made me pay.”
Reliever Sean Reynolds matched his career high, pitching the final 2 2/3 innings without a hit and four strikeouts to go with two walks to help give his bullpen mattes a vital night of rest. Wandy Peralta spelled Kolek in the sixth and threw 1 1/3 scoreless with two hits and a strikeout.
“Wandy looked really sharp, really crisp, and Reynolds did a nice job to help us winning the ballgame tomorrow and the next day by picking up two-plus,” Shildt said. “He held them right there and gave us chance, and keeps our bullpen fresh for the next couple days.”
Padres pitchers have allowed 18 home runs over the past 10 games, with opposition leaving the yard in nine of them — 12 have come off starters.
The home and home Interleague series between the Padres and Mariners was officially named the Vedder Cup earlier this year after being referred to by fans online for years. The winning team will claim a trophy featuring a guitar provided by rock legend Eddie Vedder, who attended high school in San Diego and also lived in Seattle.
The organizations are also partnering with the EB Research Partnership, a nonprofit organization that Eddie and Jill Vedder co-founded to fund research for discovering treatments and cures for Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB).
According to the Mayo Clinic, EB is an inherited condition that causes fragile, blistering skin that may appear as a response to a minor injury or contact, and in more severe cases can cause blisters to form inside the body.
Game two of the series will feature Nick Pivetta (5-2, 3.05 ERA) taking the hill for the Padres against expected Mariners starter Emerson Hancock (1-2, 6.91 ERA), with first pitch scheduled for 5:40 p.m. on Saturday at Petco Park.
This story was updated at 10:08 p.m.