Padres beat Diamondbacks 5-4 after dramatic 7th inning

Petco Park- San Diego, California

This series was supposed to allow the San Diego Padres to coast to two or three victories. The first two games didn’t show that. In both games, the starting pitching struggled greatly. In the second game, the offense nearly shut out. This third game was an opportunity to refocus and respect their opponent.

On the mound for the Padres was none other than Yu Darvish. As the ace of the staff, he was the perfect candidate to give some stability in the early innings. He continues to be one of the best pitchers in the league, earning his 11^th quality start of the season. This great performance helped save the bullpen who had started to work in the third inning of the first two games in the series.

Darvish worked six innings while giving up six hits, one earned run, walking one, and struck out seven. The lone run came in the fourth inning when runners were on the corners and he threw a wild pitch which allowed Pavin Smith to score.

Once Darvish left, things did get dicey for the Padres and Tim Hill came into the game to pitch. He has been slowly regressing from the dominant pitcher that he was in the first two months of the season. He loaded the bases and was able to induce a grounder to Fernando Tatis Jr. Instead of a routine double play, Tatis overthrew his target and allowed two runs to score while not getting a single out. Hill would allow one more run and end the top of the seventh with the Padres down 4-2.

Those first two runs came right away for the Padres. Tommy Pham, who has redeemed himself from a super slow start, hit a lead-off home run. Trent Grisham would then hit his first of three doubles and eventually score on a Jake Cronenworth single. This was all the Padres would score until the bottom of the seventh.

After that rough seventh inning in which the Padres gave up the lead, and the threat of losing the series became real, the bats got going again. Jurickson Profar would start it out with a pinch-hit single. Two batters later Grisham would hit his third double to score Profar. Cronenworth and Tatis would follow it up with a single and double to give the Padres a 5-4 lead.

Five straight hits to open the inning and it's Fernando for the lead.#HungryForMore pic.twitter.com/BzCgJiSpE3

— San Diego Padres (@Padres) June 27, 2021

“Tim has been dang good for us all year. And a chance for the group to pick him up and get the lead back here. And we held on from there after that. It wasn’t the cleanest, wasn’t the prettiest, but to continue to fight and throw punches and make some things happen late. I think that is a good sign,” Padres manager Jayce Tingler said after the game.

This is what is so great about the Padres team. The team is built to have no large weakness. After the rotation had struggled in the first two games, Darvish comes out and throws a gem. The typically lights-out bullpen kept the Diamondbacks in the game. Then the lineup had a great inning to have their pitcher’s backs.

That is the makeup of a team that has won nine of their last ten games. They will have Monday off while they travel to Cincinnati to play the Reds. Tuesday’s matchup is tentatively scheduled as Blake Snell against Tony Santillan with first pitch at 4:10 PST.

Evan Anderson

Evan is a student finishing up a degree in Finance from Northern Arizona University. The ability to break down numbers and find the story behind them has lead to his first of writing for East Village times. He covers baseball which is the sport he grew up playing and has followed even after his playing years.