Perhaps the Padres’ rotation is getting on a roll.
Finally.
Joe Musgrove struck out eight over six strong innings, helped his own cause with a sacrifice fly and the Padres beat the Marlins 8-3 in front of a crowd of 26,841 at Petco Park on Monday night to extend their winning streak to three games.
Eric Hosmer tied the game a half-inning after Musgrove allowed his second-inning run and the Padres heaped on a whole lot of insurance after Lewis Brinson’s eighth-inning homer added a measure of concern to make Musgrove a winner in his fourth straight quality start.
This one saw the 28-year-old right-hander scatter five hits and a walk and throw 63 of his 94 strikes in lowering his ERA to 1.44 over his last four trips to the mound.
The Padres have won three of those four starts.
The larger picture, of course, is that Musgrove’s start comes on the heels of Yu Darvish and Blake Snell teaming up for 25 strikeouts over back-to-back seven-inning starts, a first for a rotation billed as the team’s strength heading into the season.
After a miserable July (6.12 ERA), the Padres rotation has a 2.92 ERA through the first seven games of August.
The Padres tied the game in the second on Hosmer’s 10th homer of the season and his second in the last three games.
Three runners reached with one out in the third inning, including Manny Machado’s go-ahead single to center, but the hope of a big inning evaporated when Sierra threw out Adam Frazier at the plate on Jake Cronenworth’s fly ball to shallow center field.
No matter.
The next inning, the Padres extended their lead to 4-1 via a run-scoring single from Victor Caratini and Musgrove’s sacrifice fly to right to end Thompson’s night after four innings.
Pierce Johnson followed Musgrove’s six-inning start with a scoreless seventh and Emilio Pagán was nearly through a scoreless eighth when Isan Diaz singled and Brinson followed with a line drive that struck the third deck of the Western Metal Supply Co. building, just inside the yellow foul like painted along its edge to shave the Padres’ lead to a single run.
Pagán escaped the inning without further damage, Machado doubled to lead off the eighth and the Padres scored four runs on a single from Hosmer, a two-run triple from Trent Grisham and Caratini’s sacrifice fly to right.
Austin Adams pitched a 1-2-3 ninth in his first appearance since July 30.
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