The San Diego Padres couldn't move up in the wild-card standings as they lost big to Arizona.
The San Diego Padres couldn’t cash in on their chance to clinch the top wild-card spot as they lost 11-4 to Arizona, but they did move up into the fifth seed as the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs both lost, with the Cubs dropping a doubleheader to the Boston Red Sox and the Phillies losing their game to the Tampa Bay Rays.
Casey Mize submitted yet another disastrous start to put the Padres in a hole, starting on the first pitch when Lars Nootbar homered. Geraldo Perdomo followed with an RBI triple later in the inning, and Corbin Carroll scored a run with a sacrifice fly to put the Padres down 3-0 after the first inning.
Things soon got worse. Jordan Lawler hit a solo homer in the second inning to make a 4-0, but the Padres fought back with two runs in their half of the inning. Luis Campusano got one back with a groundout that scored a run, and Jake Cronenworth singled home a run to cut the deficit in half.
That was as close as the Padres got, however. Nolan Arenado scored Perdomo with a two-run homer to make it 6-2 in the third, and an RBI single from Gabriel Moreno upped Arizona’s lead to 7-2 in the fourth.
Mize exited after the inning with yet another ugly line as he gave up seven runs on seven hits, three of them homers to go with two walks and a strikeout. His spot on the playoff roster is reportedly in jeopardy, and the Padres will have some interesting pitching decisions to make going forward as they set things up for the postseason.
Most of what followed after Mize left was window dressing. Arizona got three more runs in the sixth on a bases-loaded double by Perdomo, and Lawlar drove in another one in the seventh to turn it into an 11-2 pounding.
The Padres made the scoreboard look a little better with solo runs in the seventh and the eighth, with Cronenworth driving in the first with a groundout and Sung-Mun Song getting the second one home with an RBI single.
San Diego still has some work to do over the weekend, as they’re just a half game ahead of the Chicago Cubs in the race for the top wild-card spot. The Padres will play Arizona on Saturday and Sunday, with the Cubs traveling to Tampa to play a neutral site game against the Boston Red Sox on Sunday due to a nasty storm that’s currently raging in the Northeast.
