SAN DIEGO _ From the deer knife, to the fishing rod to the bottle of Wild Turkey, the basket of "favorite things" that Hunter Renfroe's wife stocked for an annual fundraising auction is so ... well ... Hunter Renfroe.
A fastball with the bases loaded?
Even it was a bit inside, the Padres' surging rookie wasn't about to let Kyle Hendricks' moment of charity go unnoticed.
The 25-year-old Renfroe uncorked a momentum-shifting grand slam in the fourth inning and the Padres bullpen picked up a wild Jarred Cosart in a 5-2 win over the skidding Cubs on Monday afternoon in front of a sellout crowd of 41,414 at Petco Park.
"I ain't looked at it; it was probably a ball," Renfroe said of a home run that exited the handle side of the barrel _ at 95 mph _ for his 10th homer of the year. "It was the same pitch they threw me the first at-bat and I was a little bit late on the first one. I figured he'd come back there eventually."
Renfroe's blast came after Hendricks _ last year's ERA champ _ retired the first 10 hitters without incident.
Then Yangervis Solarte beat out an infield single, Wil Myers dumped a ball in right field for a single and Hendricks hit Ryan Schimpf to load the bases.
Three pitches later, Renfroe emptied them with a 371-foot homer to left on a 1-1, 87 mph sinker, turning a two-run deficit into a two-run lead.
Paired with the grand slam that Renfroe collected in a two-homer, seven-RBI game as a September call-up last year, Renfroe's slam off Hendricks (5 IP, 5 ER) allowed him to join Melvin Nieves (1995) as the only Padres to notch two grand slams as a rookie.
Renfroe also walked in four plate appearances and is hitting .429 (12-for-26) with two homers, six RBIs, three walks and six strikeouts over his last eight games.
"That's why the encouragement was that way for so long," Padres manager Andy Green said of the team's early messaging to Renfroe. "Shrink the strike zone down and you're eventually going to get your pitch. Today with Hendricks, he's a guy you pick one half of the plate. You don't hit the whole plate because he barely lives in the middle part of the plate."
Myers extended the Padres' advantage to 5-2 an inning after Renfroe's grand slam when he beat out a would-be double-play ball, cashing in a rally that started with left-hander Jose Torres collecting his first major league hit.
The rookie reliever paired that milestone with two scoreless innings in relief of a shaky Cosart. Brad Hand escaped Ryan Buchter's bases-loaded jam in the seventh with a double-play ball off Jason Heyward's bat before turning in a scoreless eighth and Brandon Maurer converted his seventh save with a scoreless ninth.
The win _ which extended Chicago's losing streak to four games _ was somewhat surprising given the Padres' 12 free passes: five walks and a hit batter from Cosart, two walks from Torres and three from Buchter in 1/3 of an inning.
"The rest of the game we didn't have too much going," Green said. "It was enough from an offensive standpoint for what should have been a disaster pitching wise. You give up 12 free passes, 10 walks and two hit batters. You don't win baseball games like that. That's an aberration."
Cosart wasn't around long enough to fully benefit from Renfroe's second slam.
Making his third start since returning from the disabled list, Cosart threw just 42 of his 87 pitches for strikes over four innings. That he only paid for one of the three hits he allowed _ Jason Heyward's two-run single in the first _ is beside the point for a pitcher who has yet to fully assert his claim for a long-term spot in the Padres' rotation.
His previous start was derailed to some degree by taking a first-inning comebacker off his foot. On Monday, he said a tight strike zone didn't help a cause that needed to be more efficient from the get-go.
"My arm and body felt great," Cosart said. "I was a little off mechanically earlier. I kind of smoothed it out in the third and fourth, but it was good to get a win. There's things I need to clean up, obviously, but I held them to three hits. I think when you see 10 walks in a big league baseball game it says a little bit about possibly the umpiring. We weren't getting the same calls Hendricks was getting."
Added Green: "He was able to get through four innings. I think that's the optimistic way to look at it. He gave up five walks through four innings, was teetering on the edge and we had to get the bullpen up in the first and the second innings.
"That's not ideal from a starter's perspective."
