SAN DIEGO � Not exactly one for shortcuts, Patrick Kivlehan's path to Saturday's big league debut weaved from Rutgers football's practice fields to a spot on the baseball team as a walk-on to a five-year minor league career that appeared to have stalled during a dizzying eight-month stretch in which he was traded to and from the Rangers, waived by the Mariners, claimed by the Padres and assigned to El Paso.
Got all that?
Good.
Because San Diego's newest outfielder got every bit of his first career hit, a 464-foot homer that ranks as the longest blast by a Padre in the StatCast era the lone hiccup in an otherwise dominant outing by Arizona left-hander Robbie Ray.
The 24-year-old Ray struck out a career-high 13 batters, walked just one and allowed one big hit in the fifth inning in outdueling Clayton Richard in Arizona's 2-1 win in front of 32,599 at Petco Park.
The Diamondbacks, too, waited until the fifth inning to collect their first hit, a leadoff single from Welington Castillo.
Richard, however, was far more generous than Ray, gifting both of Arizona's runs on throwing errors.
The first allowed Castillo to move to third in the fifth and ultimately score on Brandon Drury's would-be double play ball. The other plated a run in the sixth on a would-be double-play ball off the bat of Rickie Weeks.
Richard ultimately fetched three of the four double plays turned by the Padres but exited after six innings with two unearned runs on two hits and three walks.
He struck out five.
Kivlehan found himself in San Diego on Saturday after hitting .341/.356/.500 with one homer, four RBIs and 15 strikeouts in 12 games at Triple-A El Paso following his addition to the Padres' 40-man roster earlier this month.
The reserve safety-turned-Big East Player of the Year, the 26-year-old Kivlehan was a .282/.344/.470 hitter across five minor league seasons when he drilled an 0-2 fastball from Ray into the deck below the videoboard in left.
Only Melvin Upton's 465-foot blast against the Orioles on June 28 traveled further, according to StatCast tracking, and only four other Padres � Kevin McReynolds, Jason Bay, Eddy Rodriguez and Tommy Medica � had ever homered their MLB debut.
Kivlehan's second hit to lead off the eighth nearly trigged a game-winning rally.
But after Adam Rosales' ensuing double and Travis Jankowski's walk loaded the bases, Daniel Hudson retired Alexei Ramirez, Wil Myers and Yangervis Solarte in order to preserve a 2-1 lead.
In the ninth, Enrique Burgos left the tying run on first when he got Kivlehan to strike out to end the game.
