SAN DIEGO — In the instant a “Let’s go Padres” chant faded, the San Diego Padres finally began to go again.
With Adam Frazier on the second base, following a single that led off the bottom of the eighth inning and subsequent steal, Manny Machado smacked a curveball into center field to break a 2-2 tie. Jake Cronenworth was intentionally walked and Wil Myers singled with one out to load the bases. Trent Grisham walked to bring in a run. Pinch-hitter Austin Nola’s single scored two more.
With that — and Mark Melancon navigating a scoreless ninth inning — the Padres beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 6-2 on Saturday night in front of an announced crowd of 39,134 at Petco Park.
It was the kind of capitalizing the Padres have been looking for, the kind of symmetry that good teams execute more often than not.
Too often, of late, one portion of the Padres gets the job done while the other watches idly.
It took a while Saturday for that to not be the case.
As another starting pitcher signaled he was again moving toward being what he was supposed to be, the Padres were mired in a slog because their offense stopped scoring.
Yu Darvish struck out 12 and allowed four hits in seven innings, but he left with the game tied.
Machado hit a home run that almost reached the roof of the Western Metal Building in the first inning, and Eric Hosmer hit a ball off the right field foul pole in the second inning. Then they went cold again, getting three hits over the next five innings.
As they came to bat in the eighth inning, the Padres had scored two runs in the past 14 innings against the team with the major leagues’ worst record.
The Padres starters are still performing well below the level of the group that had the majors’ lowest collective ERA much of the season’s first 21/2 months. But after going 13 games without even one of the starters lasting six innings, they have done so seven times in the past 15 games.
Darvish, who ranked among the National League leaders in virtually every category and had a 2.44 ERA though his first 16 starts with the Padres, entered Saturday’s game with a 7.36 ERA over his previous five starts and proceeded to pitch as well as he had in brown.
Nobody was warming as he began the seventh inning having thrown 82 pitches.
Kole Calhoun led off the inning by stopping a run of seven straight outs by Darvish, who quickly ended the inning with three straight outs.
Calhoun’s single to right field was the Diamondbacks’ fourth hit of the game.
One of the first three was a two-run homer by Christian Walker in the second inning. While Darvish has not been wholly horrendous recently, he has made crucial mistakes. Walker’s homer was the 10th Darvish had surrendered in his past six starts.
A single by Calhoun led off the second inning, and David Peralta singled with two outs in the third.
Otherwise, he essentially just went about efficiently wiping out the Diamondbacks. Of the 93 pitches he threw, 69 were strikes. The 74 percent strike rate was his second highest of the season.
He struck out two in the first, three in the second, two in the third, two in the fourth, two in the fifth and one in the sixth. He got ahead 0-2 to seven of the first 15 batters he faced and went to three balls just twice all night.
His 12 strikeouts tied a season high first achieved April 30 against the Giants. Saturday was his 47th career game with 10 or more strikeouts but his first since June 21, a span of seven starts.
Saturday was the seventh time this season Darvish went seven innings but the first since June 9.
Yet the Padres had work to do on offense to prevent surrendering the Diamondbacks securing their first road series win since April. Arizona, which came back from a five-run deficit to beat the Padres 8-5 on Friday, has won two games in a row just four times since the beginning of May. The D-backs were 15-15 on May 5 and have gone 20-61.
A leadoff double by Tommy Pham in the third inning was followed by Adam Frazier’s groundout and successive strikeouts by Machado and Jake Cronenworth.
Hosmer, whose homer had come on the first pitch of the bottom of the second inning, walked on four pitches to start the bottom of the fourth. Wil Myers followed with a single, and Grisham’s walk loaded the bases with no outs.
But Victor Caratini popped out to shortstop, and Darvish grounded into a double play.
Taylor Widener, who had allowed 15 runs in his 12 1/3 innings previous three starts, retired the side in order in the fifth before being relieved by Tyler Gilbert in the sixth.
Gilbert pitched a perfect sixth before Grisham lined a single to left leading off the seventh. Victor Caratini struck out, pinch-hitter Ha-seong Kim walked and Pham grounded into a double play.
Drew Pomeranz replaced Darvish and pitched a scoreless eighth.
The victory kept the Padres 21/2 games ahead of the Cincinnati Reds in the race for the NL’s second-and-final Wild Card spot.
