SAN DIEGO (AP) \u2014 Nick Pivetta pitched five shutout innings in his return from a long stay on the injured list and the San Diego Padres beat the skidding Washington Nationals 3-2 on Monday to keep pace in the National League playoff race.<\/p>\n
Jackson Merrill and Fernando Tatis Jr. both finished with three hits for the Padres, who remained a half-game behind Arizona for the final NL wild card. The Diamondbacks won 5-4 in 10 innings at Kansas City.<\/p>\n
Merrill had two RBI singles that drove in Manny Machado. Tatis scored on Machado’s single in the third.<\/p>\n
Pivetta (2-2) allowed two hits in his fifth start this season and first win since April 1. He was placed on the 15-day injured list April 14 with right elbow inflammation and transferred to the 60-day IL on June 2. The right-hander struck out two and walked none while throwing 63 pitches, 39 for strikes.<\/p>\n
Bradgley Rodriguez and Adrian Morejon each worked a hitless inning before Mason Miller struck out two in a scoreless ninth for his 34th save.<\/p>\n
Nationals starter Jake Irvin (2-9) went 5 2\/3 innings, giving up up three runs and eight hits. He is 0-5 in his past eight starts.<\/p>\n
Dylan Crews hit a two-run homer for Washington, which has lost five straight games.<\/p>\n
San Diego, which took two of three against the New York Yankees at home last weekend, kept the momentum going Monday with timely hitting.<\/p>\n
The Padres scored in the first when Merrill hit a sharp single to right field to drive in Machado, who doubled.<\/p>\n
San Diego added two runs in the third for a 3-0 lead. Machado drove in Tatis from second with a single, and Merrill followed with a single to drive in Tatis.<\/p>\n
Crews connected in the sixth off reliever Kyle Hart.<\/p>\n
Padres RHP Casey Mize (5-9, 3.64 ERA) pitches Tuesday night in the middle game of the series. Washington had not announced a scheduled starter.<\/p>\n
See AP\u2019s full MLB coverage here<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN DIEGO (AP) \u2014 Nick Pivetta pitched five shutout innings in his return from a long stay on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":799389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2398],"tags":[12051,5,399,566,920,5163,871,496,153,1527,1101,4,415,45,9500,9501,97777,9496,9497,39138,39139,39140,22860,137,414,71,4222],"class_list":["post-799388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-washington-nationals","tag-adrian-morejon","tag-baseball","tag-casey-mize","tag-dylan-crews","tag-fernando-tatis-jr","tag-illinois","tag-jackson-merrill","tag-jake-irvin","tag-kyle-hart","tag-manny-machado","tag-mason-miller","tag-mlb","tag-nationals","tag-nick-pivetta","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-padres-nationals-score-pivetta-merrill","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","tag-product-40776-ap-california-sports-only","tag-product-40779-ap-delaware-maryland-sports-only","tag-product-40818-ap-virginia-sports-only","tag-product-40819-ap-washington-dc-sports-only","tag-san-diego","tag-washington","tag-washington-nationals","tag-washingtonnationals"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799388","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=799388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/799389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}