The San Diego Padres celebrated Gavin Sheets' 30th birthday with his game-winning home run against the Rockies.
Getting birthday gifts can be tough, especially when the birthday in question is the big 3-0. But first baseman Gavin Sheets of the San Diego Padres simplified the gift-giving process by presenting the Pads with a three-run homer in the ninth inning last night to complete San Diego’s come-from-behind 10-8 win over the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field yesterday.
The gift was badly needed, too, even if it was Sheets' 30th birthday and he should have been on the receiving end of the gift-giving process. The Padres haven’t been hitting for power much lately, although shortstop Xander Bogaerts also had a solo shot well before Sheets stepped to the plate. But the Padres looked a little listless in this particular Coors Field slugfest until Sheets capped off the five-run rally with his game-winning blast.
“That was pretty wild, the way the guys spilled out of the dugout,” said manager Craig Stammen said of the celebration around Sheets in a followup written by Owen Perkins of MLB com. “That was reminiscent of a winter ball game, World Baseball Classic game. It was cool to see the energy from our guys and that they were locked in, that they could come back and believed in it.”
Sheets felt the same, more or less, but it’s safe to say he wasn’t sold on the idea of having the Rockies right where the Padres wanted them.
“Definitely not, but I felt positive,” Sheets said. “We had the meat of our lineup up, and I knew we had guys who are gonna do damage.
“The biggest thing is the belief that we have in the clubhouse and the dugout,” Sheets continued. “That's the biggest difference with this team this year – we’re not going to lay over, we're going to fight. We truly believed we were gonna win that game, and it was pretty cool to see it happen.”
As for Miller’s landmark save, we’re running out of accolades to praise what he’s doing, but Stammen chose to focus on the geography of this particular outing.
“He was able to do it in Coors Field,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said. “That's not an easy spot to throw a scoreless inning. We had a lot of really good pitchers come in the games over the last three days and [they] weren't able to come out with a scoreless inning. Giving up one run in Coors Field is actually a good inning, in my mind. That's limiting the damage. He came in in a big situation in the ninth and closed it down for us.”
Miller continues to take all of this in stride, and it this point he’s responded that way so many times that it’s becoming difficult to doubt his sincerity.
“Tying something’s cool, but obviously I want to go a little further,” Miller said. “Hopefully, I just keep rolling and keep doing what I'm doing.”
The Padres won their sixth straight series yesterday, and that remains the goal for the closer going forward.
“It’s always good to bounce back,” Miller said after the Rockies took the series to the brink. “We're playing good baseball, winning a lot of series. That's the expectation. We celebrate our series wins, and then on to the next series and focus on that.”