SAN DIEGO — Joc Pederson had long since finished chugging around the bases on a Little League home run at Chase Field when Jake Cronenworth lined an errant slider into the short porch at Petco Park. Three hundred miles and more than half an hour separated the two first-inning plays Wednesday. Yet both examples of opportunism produced three runs. Both contributed to eventual blowouts by the two hottest teams in not only the National League West but also the entirety of the majors.
A couple of hours after Cronenworth’s fence-clearing drive, the San Diego Padres secured an 8-2 rout of the Pittsburgh Pirates and their 19th win in 23 games since the All-Star break. Then, Pederson and the Arizona Diamondbacks polished off an 11-4 drubbing of the Colorado Rockies to improve to 20-5 in the second half.
The roughly simultaneous results gave both winners an overall record of 69-53. And, at least in San Diego, they revealed an echo chamber of singularly focused players and staffers.
“We don’t care about what’s the noise outside,” former Diamondbacks stalwart David Peralta said after homering on his 37th birthday. “We just concentrate on what we’re going to do here and prepare the best way we can to win today.”
“You can see the scoreboard. No one’s unaware. But I, we don’t want to spend any mental energy on anybody else,” manager Mike Shildt said. “We’re just locked in on contributing to how we’re gonna win today.”
“At the end of the day, whatever the standings are, that’s the standings,” star rookie Jackson Merrill said. “We’re not gonna think about it. We’re just gonna go play baseball at the end of the day and keep playing baseball in the playoffs.”
That scenario feels more likely than ever. A day after matching a franchise record by clinching an eighth consecutive series win, the Padres — for the first time ever — won for the 19th time in a 22-game span. They have not gained separation from a similarly scorching Diamondbacks team, but they have created noticeable distance between themselves and the rest of the league’s wild-card hopefuls; early Wednesday evening, FanGraphs’ projections had San Diego (95.3 percent) and Arizona (93 percent) as near-locks to make the postseason.
Both clubs, meanwhile, were just three games behind the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West. It would be naive to think the Padres aren’t paying any attention to a pair of division rivals.
“Both those teams are playing really good right now,” Cronenworth said. “I mean, it’s fun. It’s always good, especially at the end of the season we play those two teams.”
It’s true. The Padres will end the regular season with a two-city road trip through Dodger Stadium and Chase Field, where home-field advantage in the first round could be decided. For now, though, it’s easy to take an insistence on a narrow lens at face value.
How else to explain a prolonged stretch in which the Padres have repeatedly capitalized on mistakes by inferior opponents? In Tuesday’s first inning, the league’s most contact-prone offense drew a leadoff walk, a hit-by-pitch and a Pirates fielding error before Manny Machado supplied a sacrifice fly for the first run in an eventual 3-0 win. Wednesday, the Padres started off with consecutive singles — the second aided by a bobble at first base — before a slider caught too much of the plate.
You see how Jake hit that home run? Very demure, very mindful. pic.twitter.com/ekG8tyuqd7
— San Diego Padres (@Padres) August 14, 2024
In the bottom of the third, the Padres combined back-to-back walks, a Merrill triple and Peralta’s homer to break the game open while providing welcome cushion for a bullpen that had recently exhausted its high-leverage arms. At the same time, trade-deadline pickup Martín Pérez continued to look rejuvenated en route to 5 1/3 innings of one-run ball.
His ERA before his trade: 5.20. His ERA in three starts since: 1.96.
“I’m pitching different,” Pérez said. “I’m using different pitches, using different sequencing. … I used to work too much with my fastball and everybody’s ready to hit the fastball. But I’m just trying to slow it down and go back with my fastball and slow it down again. … It’s working, so I’m gonna continue to do that.”
Another successful afternoon included other positive contributions from across the roster. Utilityman Tyler Wade collected two hits and scored from first on a double as the Padres improved to 6-0 in the games he has started since June 19. Peralta, a minor-league signee in May, homered for a second consecutive day and has a .904 OPS in his last 30 games. Newcomer Bryan Hoeing took the mound after Pérez and logged his fifth scoreless outing in as many appearances with San Diego. Rookie reliever and converted position player Sean Reynolds continued to showcase an intriguing arm, striking out a pair of batters in a 1-2-3 inning.
“It’s a club that all of them are looking to prepare and be ready to be on point for when their opportunity comes,” Shildt said. “I just give a lot of credit to the players, man. They’re just on point.
“It’s just a continual effort of getting lost in the preparation and the competition. And that’s a good place to be.”
After an off day Thursday, the Padres will embark at Coors Field on a stretch of 18 games in 18 days. Even for one of the league’s two hottest clubs, a grueling schedule looms as a significant challenge. Yet the past few weeks have revealed a team that is blending preparation, execution and good fortune to exceed all expectations — except for, perhaps, its own.
“This is normal,” Merrill said of the Padres’ franchise-record hot streak. “We are not surprised. We are not blown away by our performances. The bullpen’s working, starting pitching working, offense working. And on the days that one of them isn’t, the other one is. So it’s a team. You’re playing a team game.”
(Photo of David Peralta, right, celebrating his home run with Jackson Merrill: Denis Poroy / USA Today)
