SAN DIEGO – The scoreless drought in America’s Finest City is over, and so is the production outage from Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado as the San Diego Padres beat the St. Louis Cardinals 4-3 on Saturday evening at Petco Park.
Tatis Jr. had a two-out single as part of a three-run fifth inning for the Padres (23-16), then Machado crushed a solo home run in the eighth inning off St. Louis (23-16) reliever Matt Svanson to snap a 24 at bat hit-less streak to help San Diego take their first of the four game set.
Mason Miller worked around a pair of walks, the first time he’s done so this season, wrangling a quartet of strikeouts and a bases loaded situation in the ninth to notch his 12th save of the season in 1 1/3 innings of work to back up starter Randy Vásquez’s fourth win. The four strikeouts all came in the ninth, making him the second pitcher this season to notch four K's in the same inning.
"He's had a few days off...and the most hot hitter in the National League coming up with the tying run on base, we felt it was a good time to bring Mason in," manager Craig Stammen said. "Probably never a bad time, and you probably take the risk of him having to pitch more than one inning."
After 21 scoreless innings, Aztec for Life Ty France ended the pain by squaring up a first-pitch low sinker and crushing it 405 feet to center field to tie the game. It was the Padres' first hit of the day against St. Louis starter Dustin May, who took his fourth loss despite limiting San Diego to two earned runs in six innings.
"It just kind of let everyone ease up, tied the game, we weren't thinking about how we haven't scored, now we're thinking about how we can win this game and not so worried about getting a hit or a scoring a run," Stammen said. "Ty's come up with some big hits this year that's kinda got us out of a few funks, and is a great guy to have on our team."
That got things going for San Diego after being no-hit through the first 4 1/3 innings by St. Louis starter Dustin May, as Sung-Mun Song walked and Freddy Fermin smacked a single to center. Then Tatis Jr. hit a broken bat two-out flair to shallow right field to score them both and give San Diego the lead.
It was Tatis’ first RBI since April 29, a stretch of seven appearances without a run knocked in.
"It's just one of those things that gives you a little peace of mind that you're gonna get a hit every one and a while, he got gone, he's kinda owed that one since he's been hitting the ball so hard all year, he finally got a bleeder," Stammen said.
Vásquez was artful in his ability to dodge trouble through his five innings of work. Despite allowing six hits and a run, he was able to strand two runners in scoring position while throwing strikes on 59 of his 94 pitches for the afternoon.
The San Diego starter got half of his six strikeouts with his four-seam fastball for the afternoon while walking just one, and allowed hard-hit contact on just seven of his offerings overall. St. Louis had men on base in four of the five innings Vásquez worked, but went down in order in the fifth before he gave way to Jeremaih Estrada, who pitched a clean sixth.
Machado's home run was his 200th career home run in Brown and Gold.
Miller became the first Padre to record four strikeouts in an inning since Stammen did the same in September of 2021. Luke Gregerson was the first Padre to do so on Oct. 4, 2009 -- 121 seasons since the first time it was recorded (Ed Crane, Oct. 4, 1888).
"I heard there was a guy who did it, and he wasn't as good as Mason Miller," Stammen said, cheekily smiling as he was asked about it and then laughing after he answered.
San Diego looks for a series split on Sunday, sending Walker Buehler (2-2, 5.64 ERA) to the hill against St. Louis righty Kyle Leahy (4-3, 4.93 ERA). First pitch is scheduled for 1:!0 p.m.
This story was updated at 8:08 p.m.