SAN DIEGO_Matched up with Arizona Diamondbacks ace Zack Greinke, Jarred Cosart was one out away from turning in his second straight quality start. Regardless, his effort in a 7-4 win in 10 innings to the Diamondbacks on Friday night was perhaps his strongest to date since joining the Padres rotation as a reclamation project.
The 26-year-old right-hander struck out a season-high seven batters, allowed a run on eight hits and two walks over 5 2/3 innings and might have been deserving of a win had he not drawn Greinke coming off the second worst start of his career.
Five days after allowing nine runs in 1 2/3 innings, Greinke struck out eight over seven strong innings (2 ER) and was in line to win when Ryan Schimpf tied the game in the eighth and won it in the 10th with a three-run, walk-off homer.
Cosart matched Greinke through five innings and was nearly through the sixth when Mitch Haniger and Chris Owings notched back-to-back singles to fetch Padres manager Andy Green out of the dugout with Greinke coming to bat.
The seven strikeouts _ including Paul Goldschimdt and Welington Castillo twice _ were one shy of a career-high for Cosart, who threw 66 of his 106 pitches for strikes and allowed his only run when Yasmany Tomas led off the second with a double and scored on Owings' one-out single.
Cosart limited the damage that inning, induced a double play to get out of the third and walked his only batters of the game with two outs in the fourth inning, a threat quickly erased when he got Greinke to ground out to second.
He'd hoped to do the same in the sixth when Green lifted him for Brandon Morrow, who immediately fetched the inning-ending groundball from Greinke.
Nevertheless, limiting the opposition to two runs over his last 11 2/3 innings is a giant step in the right direction after walking six batters in his Padres debut on Aug. 1.
The Padres answered the Diamondbacks each time the Diamondbacks scored � Christian Bethancourt's run-scoring single in the second, Nick Noonan's seventh-inning sacrifice fly after Derek Norris' throwing error plated a run and Schimpf's two-run homer in the eighth _ to bail out a bullpen that has allowed seven runs the first two games of this series.
