BOSTON — A bygone era’s scheduling conflict brought the Padres to Boston this weekend, nearly 11 years after their last game at Fenway Park. It didn’t take them long to get used to the place. Two games in, they’ve already played a decade’s worth of heat.
San Diego swept the Red Sox, 11-1, on Saturday afternoon, scoring 20 runs in the first two games of the series. Manny Machado hit two home runs. Rookie Jackson Merrill homered for the second straight game. Brett Sullivan, the team’s weak-hitting third baseman, also smashed his first home run of the season, rounding the Pesky’s Pole in right field.
“Over the last week or so, we’ve stepped it up a notch,” Machado said. “It’s been fun to be a part of.”
In fact, the Padres have played arguably their best baseball of the year over the past 10 days. This game may have been their strongest performance yet. Boston right-hander Tanner Hoke pitched with a 2.18 ERA. San Diego’s suddenly on-the-ball offense didn’t flinch, scoring one run in the second inning, two in the third, one in the fourth and six in the fifth, eight of which came from Hoke.
San Diego has won nine of 10 games with the National League playoff picture now firmly in the books. The Padres are currently in second place in the National League wild card standings, 1.5 games behind the Cardinals. It’s still a close race, but they’ve finally opened up a bit of a gap between them and their closest rivals.
“We’re just looking for continued improvement,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said. “Continuous improvement is going to help all the areas work together.”
The Padres could be forgiven for doing their best to get through the All-Star break, but they’ve been plagued by injuries lately. Second baseman Xander Bogaerts and right-handers Yu Darvish and Joe Musgrove are still out, and Fernando Tatis Jr. was placed on the disabled list on Monday with a stress reaction in his right femur.
The healthy Padres, or at least those healthy enough to play, vowed to bolster their teammates, and they did just that with contributions from both expected and unexpected talent.
“The message has been clear since spring training,” Machado said. “We have to support each other. We have to make up for each other. When one guy goes down, the next guy has to take his place.”
Machado is at the center of that push. Despite nursing a strained right hip flexor, Machado has put aside early struggles and raised his level of play. He’s batting .385 over the past two weeks and delivered two solid hits on Saturday, one over the monster line and the other to center field.
Meanwhile, Merrill himself is doing pretty well. He hit nine homers in June, tying Ryan Schimpf (July 2016) for the most homers by a Padres rookie in a single month. With one game left, Merrill clearly loves hitting at Fenway Park. (A childhood Red Sox fan, Merrill called Friday night’s home run “probably the best moment of my baseball career.”)
And Sullivan’s homer on Saturday is perhaps most emblematic of the Padres’ approach to using their next-up player. Starter Luis Campasuano was placed on the disabled list last week with a bruised left thumb. Backup Kyle Higashioka has continued to perform well in his place, hitting eight homers this month.
Higashioka will rest Saturday, but will pitch on Sunday afternoon with knuckleballer Matt Waldron as catcher. Sullivan took his place and, after making sure Higashioka had touched the bat before the game, called Higashioka, who had a slugging percentage of .854 in June, “Barry Bonds.”
Apparently, it worked. The Padres’ catchers were on a roll. Sullivan hit a low liner that Pesky sent to the inside of the second row.
“That was a big deal,” Sullivan said. “Especially helping out the team and keeping the team going. The guys have been playing really well. To give Higgy some rest… I just tried to emulate what he was doing.”
And the contributions didn’t end there. Michael King, a Rhode Island native who attended Boston University, allowed just one run over six innings in front of an estimated 45 friends and family. Luis Arraez reached base four times. Ha-seong Kim reached base three times.
The Padres apparently haven’t just weathered the injury storm, they’re thriving through it.
