The moment found Jackson Merrill again. And again, the rookie stepped into that moment and made it his own.
Michael King and the team’s trio of top relievers took it from there, as the Padres began a seven-game homestand with a 5-3 victory over the Twins on Monday night.
Merrill, who hit an unprecedented four game-tying home runs in the eighth inning or later over an 11-day span between July 31 and Aug. 10, got his opportunity much earlier on Monday.
He did not hit a home run, but he did clear loaded bases in the third inning with a double that bounced just short of the warning track and up against the wall in left-center field.
“Trying to get a hit or a walk,” Merrill said. “… Once you get to two strikes, it’s just fight. Bases loaded, two outs, you’ve got to try to knock something there.”
His hit broke a 2-2 tie, and the Twins hardly made a noise from that point.
King (11-6, 3.18) found a way to make it through six innings, getting stronger as he went.
He had walked one batter in each of the first three innings and was at 64 pitches at that point. And then he threw just eight pitches in the fourth, six in the fifth and seven in the sixth.
“Yeah, I definitely got a little lucky there,” King said. “I felt like there were a couple balls off the bat that were hit a little harder than I wanted. They found gloves. Didn’t really have anything going the first few innings. No command of anything. Was either leaving pitches in the zone or nowhere close, and they capitalized on the first two innings.”
A one-out single in the fourth inning was followed by a double play grounder, and King did not allow another baserunner.
“That was big time,” Shildt said of King’s finish. “Grinded early. We score. They score. We answer back. They answer back. And he just did a really nice job, Michael, of just saying, ‘OK, that’s enough, and I’m going to make pitches.’”
Jason Adam struck out the side in the seventh inning, Tanner Scott worked a 1-2-3 eighth and Robert Suarez got the first two outs of the ninth to run the streak of retired Twins to 15. A walk and a single got the Twins their final run before Suarez finished off his 28th save.
The Padres’ team-record streak of eight consecutive series wins was stopped Sunday in Colorado.
On Monday, they continued to avoid starting a losing streak.
The last time they lost two games in a row was July 14 and 19, the final game of the first half and the first game of the second half.
With the Diamondbacks winning in Miami, the Padres maintained their one-game lead in the chase for the National League’s top wild-card spot.
“It’s unreal,” Merrill said of being in a playoff race. “And I’m really confident in us. We’re having a lot of fun right now. We’re gonna keep having fun until the season is over.”
The Padres were facing Zebby Matthews, the Twins’ top pitching prospect, who was making his second career start.
On Sunday in Colorado, they struggled to do much against Bradley Blalock, the Rockies’ ninth-ranked pitching prospect, who was making his second career start. The Padres managed a run on six hits in 5⅔ innings against Blalock.
Matthews was done after five innings, having allowed the five runs, though only the first two were earned.
Two teams that began the day in second place in their respective divisions and a half-game apart — the Twins at 70-54, the Padres at 70–55 — traded runs for the first inning-and-a-half.
A one-out walk by Trevor Larnach and Matt Wallner’s two-out double down the right field line got the Twins their first run.
The Padres turned the deficit around quickly in the bottom of the second. Luis Arraez was hit by a pitch, went to third on Jurickson Profar’s single and scored on a groundout to the right side by Jake Cronenworth. That moved Profar to second, he advanced to third on a Manny Machado groundout and scored on Xander Bogaerts’ single.
The Twins tied it back up by loading the bases on a pair of one-out singles by Edouard Julien and Christian Vásquez and King’s second walk, to No.9 batter Austin Martin, and a slow roller to second base by Willi Castro.
The bottom of the third began with Luis Arraez grounding out and Profar appearing to do so before his grounder went off first baseman Carlos Santana’s glove. Cronenworth followed with a walk and Xander Bogaerts drew a one-out walk to load the bases.
Merrill quickly fell behind 0-2 before lining a hip-high changeup the other way for his ninth go-ahead RBI of the season. He also has seven game-tying RBIs, and his combination of 16 go-ahead and game-tying homers are fourth most on the team behind Profar (23), Machado (21) and Cronenworth (20).
“His performance has been incredible,” King said. “I think that he is honestly like the MVP of our team. Without him, I don’t know where we’d be, both offensively and defensively, and he just continues to come up clutch.”
Originally Published: