Bullpen bullish, then Padres walk off to win over Red Sox

Michael King came back Saturday night.

Then the Padres came back. Then the Red Sox did too.

And finally, the Padres’ bulked-up bullpen outlasted Boston’s bullpen, and the Padres won 5-4 on Ramón Laureano’s walk-off single in the 10th inning.

The Red Sox began the bottom of the 10th by intentionally walking Ryan O’Hearn before Laureano, who missed a bunt sign, bounced the first pitch he saw over third baseman Alex Bregman, who was playing in against the bunt, to bring automatic runner Xander Bogaerts home.

“I don’t really know the signs really well,” Laureano said. “I was in between. You can’t be in between in this game. So (was) just like, ‘Let’s shut this down.’”

Before that, it was Jason Adam doing in the top of the 10th what Robert Suarez could not an inning earlier by keeping the Red Sox from scoring.

That meant the only victory would not be the moral one of King’s first start in 2½ months, though that was big for the Padres.

“Just having him come out of the game healthy is a win for us,” said Bogaerts, who drove in the Padres’ first two runs. “I mean, obviously you want to win the game, but we know that is someone that we would need in the long run.”

After King went two innings plus one batter and was charged with two runs and Wandy Peralta was charged with another, the game turned for the Padres in the middle.

A leadoff single by Fernando Tatis Jr. and four consecutive two-out walks in the fifth inning turned a 3-2 Red Sox lead into a 4-3 Padres lead.

From there, it was a matchup of the bullpens.

Peralta had gotten through the fourth inning, and manager Mike Shildt chased the victory by going to the back end of his bullpen.

The Padres took the lead after the first of Jeremiah Estrada’s two scoreless innings. Adrian Morejón got two outs in the seventh before Mason Miller finished off that inning and worked a scoreless eighth. Suarez blew the save when Ceddanne Rafaela reached on a dribbled infield single, stole second and scored on Roman Anthony’s ground-rule double.

King’s last start had been May 18, and at the time, he ranked seventh in the National League with a 2.59 ERA.

He woke up six days later in Atlanta ready to start against the Braves, except for the fact that he found he did not have anywhere near full strength or range of motion in his arm.

He was eventually diagnosed with a nerve impingement near his right shoulder and was limited to sporadic light catch for more than a month.

There was a period in which no one could say for sure whether the area around the impingement would relax and whether he would return this season. But as scary as that was, the upside was that once the inflammation did subside, there was not the lasting effect or concern there would be with a ligament or tendon injury.

Once he began a throwing progression in late June, his timetable for return was merely a matter of building strength.

He threw one simulated game at Petco Park and made a rehab start on Aug. 3 for Triple-A El Paso.

He was a mix of sharp and not quite enough on Saturday, as he routinely got ahead of hitters but could not put them away.

A double by Bregman and a single by Jarren Duran put the Red up 1-0 in the first inning.

King then embarked on a 34-pitch inning that was ultimately his undoing, though he did keep the Red Sox from scoring after they loaded the bases with one out.

In the bottom of the second, Bogaerts tied the game against his former team with a ball to the seats beyond left field for his third home run in four games.

“Not as crisp as I’d like to be,” King said. “They made me work in that second inning. … But super excited to get back out there. It has been a long time, and I definitely love having the bullpen behind me, because they carried the day today.”

Peralta, who had been warming up in the second inning, replaced King after Bregman began the third inning with his second double.

Another Duran single moved Bregman to third before a strange sequence saw the Red Sox take a 3-1 lead.

First, on a grounder by Trevor Story back to Peralta, Bregman got caught in a rundown that took long enough that Duran went to third and Story ended up on second.

The Padres then tried the hidden ball trick, with Machado keeping the ball and tagging Duran. But Peralta had stepped on the rubber as if to pitch, which resulted in Duran scoring and Story walking to third on a balk.

A fielder’s choice brought in Story before Peralta ended the inning.

Another hit by Bogaerts, this one a two-out single that scored Luis Arraez after his one-out double, got the Padres to 3-2 in the bottom of the third.

Tatis began the bottom of the fifth with a single before Arraez and Manny Machado made outs. But Red Sox starter Lucas Giolito, who had walked one of the first 21 batters he faced, walked Jackson Merrill, Bogaerts, O’Hearn and Laureano in succession to bring in two runs.

Estrada struck out the final five batters he faced in two perfect innings. Morejón got two outs in the seventh and left a runner to Miller. The hard-throwing right-hander, acquired at the trade deadline, struck out four of the five batters he faced.

“Michael gutted through it, and then we got to a point where we had to turn it over,” Shildt said. “… And here we go. We ran them out there.”