Tatis Jr., Machado end scoring drought, Padres hang on to top Cardinals
Eric Evelhoch
Host · Writer
SAN DIEGO – The scoreless drought in America’s Finest City is over, and so is the production outage from Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado as the San Diego Padres beat the St. Louis Cardinals on Saturday night at Petco Park.
Tatis Jr. had a two-out single as part of a three-run fifth inning for the Padres (23-16), then Machado crushed a solo home run in the eighth inning off St. Louis (23-16) reliever Matt Svanson to snap a 24 at bat hit-less streak to help San Diego take their first of the four game set.
Mason Miller worked around a pair of walks, the first time he’s done so this season, wrangling a quartet of strikeouts and a bases loaded situation in the ninth to notch his 12th save of the season in 1 1/3 innings of work to back up starter Randy Vásquez’s fourth win.
After 21 scoreless innings, Aztec for Life Ty France ended the pain by squaring up a first-pitch low sinker and crushing it 405 feet to center field to tie the game. It was the Padres' first hit of the day against St. Louis starter Dustin May, who took his fourth loss despite limiting San Diego to two earned runs in six innings.
That got things going for San Diego after being no-hit through the first 4 1/3 innings by St. Louis starter Dustin May, as Sung-Mun Song walked and Freddy Fermin smacked a single to center. Then Tatis Jr. hit a broken bat two-out flair to shallow right field to score them both and give San Diego the lead.
It was Tatis’ first RBI since April 29, a stretch of seven appearances without a run knocked in.
Vásquez was artful in his ability to dodge trouble through his five innings of work. Despite allowing six hits and a run, he was able to strand two runners in scoring position while throwing strikes on 59 of his 94 pitches for the afternoon.
The San Diego starter got half of his six strikeouts with his four-seam fastball for the afternoon while walking just one, and allowed hard-hit contact on just seven of his offerings overall. St. Louis had men on base in four of the five innings Vásquez worked, but went down in order in the fifth before he gave way to Jeremaih Estrada, who pitched a clean sixth.
San Diego looks for a series split on Sunday, sending Walker Buehler (2-2, 5.64 ERA) to the hill against St. Louis righty Kyle Leahy (4-3, 4.93 ERA). First pitch is scheduled for 1:!0 p.m.
