Padres tighten up after weird start, beat Giants and take series

The Padres won a game and clinched a series and remained a game back in the National League West because they were the more tenacious, less sloppy team playing at Petco Park on Thursday afternoon.

The latter would have been difficult to believe in the third inning, when the Padres gave away two runs on a series of misplays.

But it was true.

The Padres came back with eight runs between the fourth and fifth innings and held on for an 8-4 victory over the Giants.

“Today was one of the games that I enjoyed the most this year out of this team, because we didn’t start off with our ‘A’ game,” manager Mike Shildt said. “And that’s going to happen. You’re just going to have games like that. The human factor kicks in. But the championship clubs, they regroup really quickly. And so down early, wasn’t as pretty as we’d like, wasn’t as clean as we like. And it was like, ‘Nah, let’s kick it into gear this game.’ And we did, and that’s what really good teams do. I’m really proud of the group.”

The Padres’ third consecutive victory in the four-game series, which came on the eve of a three-game set against the division-leading Dodgers, was unlike the others.

It was unlike most others, at least early on.

The Padres tied a game they shouldn’t have trailed in the fourth inning, scored six runs in the fifth inning with help from a two-error play and survived a burst of a comeback powered by back-to-back homers off Dylan Cease at the start of the sixth.

The Giants took a 2-0 lead in the third inning on two earned runs that they did virtually nothing to earn besides accepting the Padres’ uncommon charity.

At the start, Luis Matos hit a high but routine fly ball to the gap in center field that Fernando Tatis Jr. called for and appeared to have before he backed off at the last second. The ball bounced off Tatis’ glove as he made a dive for it, and Ramos kept running to third base with a triple.

The next batter, Andrew Knizner, flared a fly ball down the right field line that was a sure single. But Tatis charged too hard, and the ball bounced up on him and then past him. Matos scored easily, and Knizner got a double.

That was followed by Jung-Hoo Lee rolling a soft grounder to the right side that second baseman Jake Cronenworth charged and had the ball go in and out of his glove. That got Knizner to third, putting him in position to score on Heliot Ramos’ double-play grounder.

“Mistakes are gonna happen; things like that are gonna happen,” Cronenworth said. “But how can we come back and reverse that?”

That is what the Padres showed. After just a while.

Giants starter Justin Verlander continued to be perfect through the third inning, though the Padres did have him up to 50 pitches, thanks in part to Cronenworth’s 12-pitch strikeout in the third.

In the fourth, Verlander faded.

Tatis grounded the first pitch of the inning down the left field line for a double and went to third on a single by Luis Arraez.

Manny Machado’s second nine-pitch at-bat of the game ended with a single that scored Tatis and moved Arraez to third base.

A sacrifice fly by Xander Bogaerts made it 2-2.

In the fifth inning, the Padres would not only take advantage of a comically bad sequence by the Giants but take four extra bases, drop down three straight bunts and steal a base.

Ramón Laureano’s single and a walk by Cronenworth began the fifth, and the Padres were ready to settle for moving both runners over on a bunt by Freddy Fermin. But Giants third baseman Casey Schmitt threw wide of first base, allowing Laureano to score. And Cronenworth followed him home when Matos, the right fielder, overran the ball trying to pick it up after it bounced off the side wall.

A bunt single by Tatis and a sacrifice bunt by Arraez put runners on second and third, and both scored on Machado’s double.

That ended Verlander’s day, and reliever Matt Gage promptly hit Ryan O’Hearn. With Bogaerts at the plate, Machado stole third. He scored on Bogaerts’ single, which moved O’Hearn to third base.

The last of the six runs — the Padres’ third-biggest inning of the season — came on Laureano’s second single of the inning.

The six-run lead quickly got blasted down to four, as Rafael Devers and WIlly Adames began the sixth inning with home runs off Cease.

Jeremiah Estrada replaced Cease at that point and worked into the seventh before Adrian Morejón took over with a runner on second and one out. Morejón left a runner on first with one out for Mason Miller in the eighth. And Robert Suarez worked a 1-2-3 ninth inning.

“We came back, and then we really, really put it on them,” Cease said. “But this team never, never quits. So it’s not too shocking.”

Thursday was the Padres’ 20th victory in a game in which they trailed by two or more runs, more than in all but six other seasons.

In the end, they had it from the start.

“We were just not going to lose that game,” Tatis said. “It was that simple. Everybody knew that we needed to win that game, especially us. And everybody was on board, just doing what it would take to win that ballgame.”