ARLINGTON, Texas _ Coming to a Texas-sized ballpark was just what the Padres needed to remember who they thought they were.
And to be reminded again what a dimension-defying wonder Fernando Tatis Jr. is.
The 21-year-old made massive Globe Life Park play small for a couple at-bats, taking over the major league lead by hitting two home runs and driving in seven runs in successive at-bats in what ended up a 14-4 rout of the Rangers on Monday night.
Even before Tatis ripped a three-run homer in the seventh inning and blasted his first career grand slam on a 3-0 pitch in the eighth, the Padres were well on their way to ending a losing streak at five games.
Zach Davies (3-2) allowed three runs on three hits in his five innings, and a battered bullpen closed out the victory, which got the Padres back to .500 (12-12).
More than anything, they were judicious and aggressive at the plate, sprayed balls to all corners of the synthetic grass outfield and aggressively ran the bases.
What the Padres did is what manager Jayce Tingler said would be necessary inside the Rangers' new yard, with its crooked outfield fence seemingly halfway across the Lone Star State from home plate.
"This ballpark is going to present a lot challenges," Tingler said Monday afternoon. "It's extremely big. The ball doesn't seem to be traveling here. ... What I'm hoping is we lower our sights. It is a lot of turf, a lot of gaps. We need to see if we can split some gaps, turn some doubles into triples and rely on our base running. We just have to keep the line moving."
It's actually what they have needed to do for some time. But especially in a ballpark that had yielded an MLB-low 1.6 home runs a game entering Monday.
Tatis refigured that math by sending his first home screaming 405 feet on a line to left-center and his second one 407 feet to right field.
The Padres came into the game having hit 37 home runs, third most in the majors. Of late, it was almost the only way they scored. Of their mere 35 runs over their previous 10 games, 28 had a homer involved.
While they did get their final eight runs Monday via the homer, the first six were scored the old-fashioned way.
And the first of their home runs Monday may have been spurred by some other prescient Tingler words.
Hours after Tingler said he was looking forward to Luis Torrens providing some sorely needed offense at the catcher position, Austin Hedges hit his second homer in 12 at-bats.
It was just the 15th homer in 23 games here, and it had to go 403 feet to barely clear the wall in left-center and bounce in the Padres' bullpen.
That gave the Padres a run in three consecutive innings and pushed their lead to 7-0.
The previous two innings were more emblematic of the manufacturing the Padres had done early in the season and the manner of offense by which they would like to be characterized.
Eric Hosmer worked a full-count walk leading off the second inning, and four hits followed.
Ty France singled, and Jake Cronenworth doubled off the left field wall to score Hosmer. Jurickson Profar followed with a double that scored France and Cronenworth. Profar moved to second on Hedges' MLB-leading fourth sacrifice bunt and scored on a single by Trent Grisham.
Hosmer singled with one out in the third and came around from first when Texas first baseman Derek Dietrich simply missed a throw from shortstop Isaiah Kiner-Falefa. The ball rolled into shallow right field, Hosmer kept going around third and just beat second baseman Rougned Odor's throw to the plate.
The Padres' bullpen, which had been complicit in the past two losses and entered the game with the majors' third-worst ERA (6.48), made the Padres sweat for a few minutes in the sixth inning.
Davies was removed in with no outs in the sixth inning after yielding a hard single on his 85th pitch, having allowed two runs on three hits.
He was replaced by Pierce Johnson, who walked the first batter he faced. Joey Gallo followed by lining a double to center field, directly at but over the head of Trent Grisham, who got turned around tracking the ball.
That scored a run got the Rangers to 7-3.
After Johnson got Nick Solak on a soft liner to second base, Matt Strahm came in and retired the next two batters.
Strahm also worked a scoreless seventh inning. The lefty has not allowed a run in his past eight innings.
By the time Luis Perdomo allowed an unearned run in the eighth, it was of no consequence.
