The Padres got two home runs in an inning for the first time this season. Walker Buehler went longer than four innings for the first time this season.<\/p>\n
The Padres got what they really needed in the game\u2019s last at-bat for the second time this season and for the second night in a row.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re opportunistic, hitting home runs when we need to tonight,\u201d manager Craig Stammen said.<\/p>\n
Yes, a night after their first walk-off victory of the season on a home run, the Padres got their second.<\/p>\n
This one was not a grand slam, and it came before the 12th inning.<\/p>\n
The Padres were able to accomplish Friday night\u2019s 5-2 victory over the Colorado Rockies in nine innings when Gavin Sheets became the first Padres player to homer twice in a game this season.<\/p>\n
The ninth inning began with Jackson Merrill grounding a single into left field and Manny Machado walking. Merrill moved to third on a fly ball to deep right field by Xander Bogaerts, who hit the slam on Thursday, before Sheets walked off this one with his second prodigious drive to right field.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe second one felt a lot better,\u201d Sheets, whose second homer traveled 434 feet, 18 feet further than the first, said with a laugh.<\/p>\n
That made the dual plot line of Buehler being exponentially better on the mound and Luis Campusano continuing to be exponentially better at the plate much more fulfilling.<\/p>\n
It was home runs by Sheets and Campusano that put the Padres up 2-0 in the sixth inning.<\/p>\n
They were cruising toward having those homers hold up after Buehler\u2019s six scoreless innings and a scoreless seventh by Kyle Hart.<\/p>\n
But Adrian Morej\u00f3n\u2019s frustrating season continued, as he allowed four singles, just one of them hit hard, and the Rockies scored twice against him in the eighth inning.<\/p>\n
The Padres ended up needing Jason Adam, who came off the injured list Friday afternoon, to make his season debut with two outs and strand runners at second and third base.<\/p>\n
Mason Miller began the ninth inning for the Padres, pitching for the third consecutive day in a non-save situation. He struck out the side and got his first win of the season.<\/p>\n
The foundation for the Padres\u2019 sixth win in seven games was laid by Buehler.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t just make it thrrough four innings unscathed. He breezed through them in 49 pitches, allowing just a single in the first inning and another in the second.<\/p>\n
Those were the innings he had aced in both of his first two starts before not just faltering but falling off a cliff.<\/p>\n
Buehler had not retired the first batter in the third inning in either of his first two starts. He retired all three batters he faced in the third on Friday and did it in eight pitches.<\/p>\n
He took 14 pitches to get through a 1-2-3 fourth and nine to get through the fifth, which saw Willi Castro get the Rockies\u2019 third single of the night, a grounder that bounced off the first base bag, and 10 pitches to retire the Rockies in order in the sixth.<\/p>\n
That put him at 68 pitches, 50 of them strikes. He fell behind 1-0 to three of the 20 batters he faced, 2-0 one time and never threw three balls to a batter.<\/p>\n
Hart replaced Buehler and helped himself out of a jam he created in the seventh inning. After walking a batter and giving up a hard single, the left-hander got a pop-up and then picked off Jordan Beck at second and finished the inning with a groundout.<\/p>\n
Campusano, who had doubled in his first at-bat Friday, led off the bottom of the eighth with a walk and is 6-for-11 with four doubles in five games since breaking an 0-for-35 stretch that had its origin in 2024.<\/p>\n
The Padres had just six hits in all and were 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position before the ninth inning.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst and formeost,\u201d Sheets said, the way we\u2019ve been throwing the ball and play defense, to be rewarded and get these wins the past couple days is huge. \u2026 Being able to bounce back, two huge wins.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Padres got two home runs in an inning for the first time this season. Walker Buehler went…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":673254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2407],"tags":[5,853,4,43,137,18,4339,4338,185,3546],"class_list":{"0":"post-673253","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego-padres","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-padres","12":"tag-san-diego","13":"tag-san-diego-padres","14":"tag-sandiego","15":"tag-sandiegopadres","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-top-stories-sdut"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116386061608571582","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}