Lars Nootbaar homered on the game’s first pitch Friday night and Nolan Arenado added his 30th homer as the visiting Arizona Diamondbacks tightened the National League wild-card race with an 11-4 rout of the San Diego Padres.
Arizona (86-74) scored in six of the first seven innings to earn its sixth straight win and move within a game of Philadelphia (87-73) for the final NL wild-card spot with two games remaining. Should the teams finish with identical records, Arizona would win the tiebreaker based on a better intra-division record. The sides split their six meetings this year.
The Diamondbacks rapped out eight hits on Friday and worked eight walks from five San Diego pitchers.
Brandon Pfaadt (8-3) allowed nine hits and four runs in 7 2/3 innings to beat the Padres for the third time this year. He walked two and fanned seven. Casey Mize (6-10) absorbed the loss, giving up seven runs on seven hits and two walks with one strikeout in just four innings.
Despite the loss, San Diego (89-71) moved within a game of clinching home-field advantage in the NL wild-card round on Tuesday. The Padres are 1 1/2 games ahead of the Chicago Cubs, who were swept in a doubleheader at Boston, and two games up on Philadelphia.
The Padres were aiming to clinch home field, but Mize couldn’t cope with the Arizona offense. After allowing Nootbaar’s 403-foot blast to right-center, Mize was rocked for an RBI triple by Geraldo Perdomo and a sacrifice fly from Corbin Carroll to make it 3-0 before the first inning ended.
Jordan Lawlar upped the advantage to 4-0 in the top of the second by lofting a solo homer to right, his sixth. San Diego pulled two runs back in its half of the second via Luis Campusano’s RBI groundout and Jake Cronenworth’s run-scoring single.
Arenado belted a towering two-run shot in the third to restore a four-run lead, followed by Gabriel Moreno’s RBI single to center in the fourth. Perdomo ripped a three-run double off Kyle Hart in the sixth for a 10-2 cushion.
Lawlar’s double-play ball in the seventh finished the Arizona scoring. Cronenworth plated a run in the bottom of the seventh on a fielder’s choice grounder and Sung-Mun Song singled home the Padres’ last run in the eighth.
–Field Level Media
