The San Diego Padres crippled the San Francisco Giants’ bid for a playoff berth with a third consecutive win Wednesday afternoon, riding Manny Machado’s three RBIs and right-hander Joe Musgrove’s 11 strikeouts to a 5-4 road win and series sweep.
Brandon Drury and Wil Myers combined for four hits and two runs in a nine-hit Padres attack, and Josh Hader came out of the doghouse to pitch a scoreless ninth, closing the door on the National League West second-place team’s fifth win in its last six games.
The loss was the Giants’ seventh in a row. They fell 10 1/2 games behind the Padres in the wild-card chase with just 33 games remaining.
After a three-inning scoreless deadlock authored by Musgrove and Giants lefty Alex Wood, Machado got the Padres on the board first with an RBI single that scored Ha-Seong Kim in the fourth.
Luis Campusano had a run-scoring single and Machado slashed a two-RBI double in the fifth, and the Padres made it 5-0 on a Jake Cronenworth sacrifice fly in the sixth before the Giants, for the second day in a row, came storming back.
Austin Wynns doubled home a run in the sixth, Thairo Estrada’s groundout and Luis Gonzalez’s single each produced a run in the seventh and when Joc Pederson plated Austin Slater with a two-out single in the eighth, suddenly it was a 5-4 game.
But Luis Garcia came on to strike out pinch hitter J.D. Davis with the potential tying run aboard to end the eighth, and Hader came through in the ninth with his first save in eight games as a Padre, bouncing back with three straight outs after an inning-opening single by Estrada.
Hader’s ERA since being acquired from the Milwaukee Brewers had been 23.14.
Gonzalez’s hit in the seventh ended Musgrove’s day. In snapping a personal 11-game winless streak after opening the season 8-0, Musgrove (9-6) was charged with three runs on three hits and two walks in 6 2/3 innings.
His 11 strikeouts were a season best and equaled the second most of his career.
Wood (8-12) was pulled two outs into the fifth inning for the Giants, having given up four runs and five hits. He walked one and struck out five.
Kim scored twice for the Padres, who improved to 11-5 this year against the Giants. The clubs will meet three more times on the final three days of the regular season in San Diego.
–Field Level Media
