ST. LOUIS _ The changed Padres once again cashed in on all their hard work.
After seven innings of seeing so many pitches and stranding so many runners, a pair of two-run homers in the eighth inning lifted them to a 6-4 victory over the Cardinals on Saturday at Busch Stadium.
It was the third straight victory for the Padres. In all three, they have scored the deciding run in the sixth inning or later.
While the Padres were 2 for 13 with runners in scoring position _ something to keep an eye on, as it continues a trend _ they won because they kept giving themselves chances.
Austin Hedges hit a two-run homer in the eighth inning to put the Padres up 4-3, and two outs and a walk later Manny Machado homered for the second time in three games to provide their final runs.
Hedges' blast to left field on a full-count fastball came after Fernando Tatis had worked a leadoff walk. Ian Kinsler earned the Padres' 10th walk of the game two batters before Machado's homer.
Craig Stammen allowed his first run in 6 1/3 innings this season when he surrendered one on three hits in the eighth. Kirby Yates earned his fifth save with a scoreless ninth.
Matt Wisler worked the sixth and seventh innings without allowing a run to get the victory in his first game with the Padres since being acquired in a trade on Monday.
Saturday was a clinic in making pitchers work and/or pitchers battling.
Padres rookie Chris Paddack learned first-hand what major league hitters can do to wear down a pitcher even when they're not knocking him around the yard, and Cardinals starter Michael Wacha learned these aren't the same old Padres.
The team that has been at the bottom of the major leagues in batting average and at or near the bottom in on-base percentage the past five seasons has blossomed into a collection that takes pitches, fights off pitches, puts pitches in play and gets big hits when it matters (at least most often so far).
In these three victories, which have improved their record to 6-3 (their best start in 10 years), the Padres walked 22 times. They never walked that many times in a three-game span in 2018.
Paddack, the 23-year-old making his second major league start, worked through command issues against a veteran lineup that certainly did make him toil.
Paddack, who will be on a workload limit this season as he is less than two years removed from Tommy John surgery, threw 89 pitches in 3 2/3 innings.
He allowed an unearned run in the second inning when Yadier Molina led off with a single, went to third on Dexter Fowler's hard grounder that got past second baseman Kinsler and scored on Kolten Wong's sacrifice fly.
Paddack, who allowed a run in five innings in his major league debut this past Sunday, had just one 1-2-3 inning against the Cardinals. After taking 37 pitches to get through his first three major league innings six days earlier, he needed 61 pitches to get through three innings Saturday.
The final out he got took 10 pitches. Molina, a 16-year veteran who doesn't hit like he used to but nonetheless knows how to put together a pro plate appearance, went from 0-2 to a full count with four foul balls along the way. His single in the second inning punctuated an eight-pitch at-bat.
With two outs in the fourth, Dexter Fowler worked a seven-pitch walk and Kolten Wong an eight-pitch walk. That was it for Paddack, whose four walks were twice as many as he had ever issued in a professional game. In fact, he had walked more than one batter just twice in his previous 34 starts.
The Padres, meanwhile, were doing their own work on Wacha, who walked more Padres on Saturday than he had in any of his previous 128 major league starts.
Of their eight walks off Wacha, two came in each of the first three innings and two more came in the sixth. Despite that helping them to put runners in scoring position in those four innings (twice with fewer than two outs), they scored just one run off the veteran right-hander.
That came in the first inning when Hosmer walked, went to third on Machado's single and scored on a double by Hunter Renfroe.
Marcell Ozuna's two-run homer off Robert Stock in the sixth inning broke a 1-1 tie. Hosmer's solo shot in the seventh halved the lead.
