Padres nearer to playoffs, pitching decisions after victory over White Sox

CHICAGO — The Padres took one more step toward the inevitable and one more step toward having to make some decisions.

Their tiptoed march to the postseason continued on Saturday with a 7-3  victory over the White Sox.

It was the Padres’ second victory in five games on the season’s final road trip, which ends Sunday.

They will return home having yet to clinch a playoff berth, because the Reds won Saturday.

The Padres’ magic number is down to one against the Diamondbacks and three against the Reds. That means they need a victory or a Diamondbacks loss to ensure Arizona cannot pass them and some combination of victories and Reds losses adding up to three to ensure the Reds cannot pass them.

The Padres made it possible to clinch Monday by winning for just the 10th time in their past 25 games.

Ryan O’Hearn’s bases-loaded double broke a 2-2 tie in the sixth inning. Jackson Merrill homered and doubled and scored three times.

Yu Darvish allowed two runs over 4⅔ innings, and the Padres’ four high-leverage relievers finished off the game, which is likely about how it would look if Darvish were to get a postseason start.

“Put us in a good position with what we did to win a baseball game,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said.

It was with that possibility in mind that the men who make personnel decisions for the Padres observed Saturday’s game.

It was the first of what were essentially two straight tests for their starting pitchers this weekend.

“The next couple days will give us more clarity about where people are – physically and in performance,” Shildt said before the game. “The next couple days will also tell us where we are at as a team. We’ll take all those factors in and evaluate them.”

Nick Pivetta, whose 2.81 ERA over 30 starts is fifth best in the National League, will almost certainly start the first game of the Padres’ wild-card series.

And it would follow that Michael King will be the Game 2 starter contingent on how his mechanics and his pitches look here Sunday. The right-hander is coming off a start — just his third in four months due to two stints on the injured list – in which he allowed the Mets a career-high eight runs in three innings.

The Padres would love for Darvish to demonstrate he can be trusted in Game 3, considering that Dylan Cease on Friday again had trouble keeping a game in check as his ERA swelled to 4.64.

Darvish, who made his season debut on July 7 after nursing an elbow issue through the season’s three months, allowed six hits Saturday to a team that lost its 97th game and ranks 27th in batting average.

“I think I’m making a good progression,” Darvish said. “I didn’t have a walk, and the quality of the pitches is coming along.”

Adrian Morejón replaced him and worked through the sixth inning. Jeremiah Estrada, Mason Miller and Robert Suarez worked an inning apiece at the end, with Suarez allowing a two-out home run to Lenyn Sosa in the ninth.

The game began in a far too familiar way for the Padres of late, as the White Sox took a lead in the first inning.

With two outs, Colson Montgomery hit a groundball not particularly hard that got under the glove of O’Hearn at first base and into right field for a single. That was followed by Miguel Vargas driving a ball to the gap in left-center field that brought Montgomery home.

It was the 12th time in 33 games — and the fourth time in the past five games — the Padres have trailed after the first inning.

This deficit did not last long.

Merrill sent the second pitch of the second inning over the wall in right-center field for his sixth home run in his past 13 games.

The Padres trailed again two innings later when Chase Meidroth lined a single into right field and Kyle Teel doubled to the opposite gap.

White Sox starter Yoendrys Gómez surrendered just three other hits through five innings.

The 23-year-old right-hander, who had not recorded an out in the sixth inning in any of his seven big-league starts, ended up doing so Saturday. But he also yielded a single to Fernando Tatis Jr. leading off the sixth, threw a pitch behind Luis Arraez that allowed Tatis to get to second, had Tatis easily steal third on ball Gómez bounced and gave up an RBI single to Manny Machado.

That is when Fraser Ellard replaced Gómez, missed on his first four pitches to walk Merrill and walked Gavin Sheets to load the bases with two outs before O’Hearn cleared the bases with his double that rolled to the wall in left-center.

The Padres added a run in the eighth on a double by Merrill and single by Sheets and one more in the ninth when Tatis reached on a fielder’s choice, stole second and scored on Arraez’s single.

“I think the scoreboard could have looked — we could have put a lot more runs up there,” O’Hearn said. “There were a lot of hard-hit balls, especially early on, that didn’t land on grass. But I think guys are committed to figuring it out individually and then collectively. When it shows up on the field like that, it’s fun.”