A Day of Firsts: Padres sweep the Giants in SF (again)

The San Diego Padres got a big win, and a big sweep, in San Francisco and might be turning a corner as the calendar turns to September.

The San Diego Padres defeated the San Francisco Giants yesterday, by a score of 5-4, finishing off a sweep. The Padres have now won 5 of their last 6 games, and they (not coincidentally) have scored 4+ runs in all 6 of those games.

The offense is working as it should, with men getting on base in front of Soto-Machado-Bell-Drury and getting hit in regularly. I can’t find it, but I believe I heard on the radio yesterday that the Padres have scored 4+ runs in 60 games this season and are 46-14 in those games. That sounds about right and, now that they have an offense that should score 4+ runs per game (finally living up to the expectations that were created a month ago), they should keep winning like this.

Yesterday felt special, though. Sure, winning 5 of 6 always feels good, but the Royals are bad and the Giants were really struggling when the Padres came to town. Yesterday was more about purging demons that have been plaguing this team, and it felt like an appropriate way to close out the series before the Padres head to Los Angeles to take on the Dodgers.

Check out these “firsts” for the Padres that they got yesterday:

• It was the first win for Joe Musgrove since June 16th, which was well before he signed his contract extension.

• It was the first save for Josh Hader since July 29th, and his first save as a member of the San Diego Padres.

• It was the first time in the history of the San Diego Padres that they have swept the Giants in San Francisco two times in the same season.

Cheers for getting those monkeys off the back of the team, and cheers for the team taking care of business against the Giants even better than they did against the Royals.

Hader getting the save felt the most significant, though. Especially doing it at the ballpark where he started to falter this season, really for the first time in his career, before being traded by the Brewers.

Josh Hader was called into service, to close out a game on the road after being promised that he’d be pitching in low leverage situations, because the rest of the bullpen was tired. Nick Martinez, who had been closing games, had pitched in 3 of the 4 previous games. The Padres needed to sink or swim with their broken all-star closer.

Hader gave up one hit, a broken-bat bloop single that landed in shallow center field, because the baseball gods are funny that way. A wild pitch (that probably should’ve been a passed ball) got the runner to 2nd base. Then Hader got two weak fly balls and a strikeout, mostly throwing fastballs.

Is Hader back to his previous form? No, but it was a step in the right direction.