6:29 AM UTC
SAN DIEGO — Maybe — just maybe — this time it’s for real.
The Padres have tantalized before this season. They’ve unleashed their starpower before, and they’ve looked like a team built for a deep October run. Seriously; they have — they simply haven’t done it very often, and when they have, they’ve generally followed it with even longer stretches of inconsistent play and underperformance.
So perhaps it’s worth taking all this with a requisite grain of salt. But the Padres swept the Angels at Petco Park this week, punctuating the series with a tense 5-3 victory. They won big, and they won small. In the process, they earned their first sweep of a series lasting at least three games this season and their first sweep at Petco Park in over a calendar year.
“There’s no special secret,” said Fernando Tatis Jr. “We’re going out there, we’re playing good baseball, we’re putting good at-bats, we’re playing defense, we’re stealing bases. And we’re having better results.”
Wednesday’s series finale featured more than its share of drama. Hours before first pitch, manager Bob Melvin noted that closer Josh Hader likely wouldn’t be available. He’d pitched in consecutive games, and hadn’t pitched three straight days in his Padres tenure.
But while Hader played catch, pitching coach Ruben Niebla approached him with an ask. For a number of reasons, the Padres needed this one. They were coming off a brutal road trip. They’d finally started to build some momentum with victories over the Angels on Monday and Tuesday.
If Hader were up for it — and, ultimately, it was Hader’s decision based on his health — the Padres wanted him for the ninth, even though they generally shy away from such usage.
“It’s a big series for us to, obviously, get a sweep,” Hader said. “Just got to get wins, too. I think all of that kind of factors in. But at the end of the day, I felt good enough that I was able to go three [in a row].”
Sure enough, the Padres clung to a two-run lead in the ninth. Manny Machado’s solo home run — his 66th at Petco Park, setting a stadium record — put them on top in the sixth.
The Angels tied it in the seventh with Matt Thaiss’ homer off Nick Martinez, but San Diego responded by scratching across a run apiece in the seventh and eighth innings, on Xander Bogaerts’ RBI groundout and Machado’s bases-loaded walk.
In the meantime, Hader and Luis García got loose in the Padres’ bullpen. When the lead remained two runs, the bullpen doors opened and — for the first time since he was a Brewer in September 2021 — Hader entered his third game in three days.
“He’s got a sense of where we are as a team,” Melvin said. “He wanted the ball tonight in a save situation. He got it. Pretty efficient, too.”
Indeed, Hader made quick work of the Angels, permitting only a one-out walk to Taylor Ward as he nailed down his 20th save of the season. Afterward, he said he felt fine — no discernable difference from any other outing.
But he acknowledged he was still running on adrenaline, and he wasn’t sure how he’d feel on Thursday’s off-day or — more notably — Friday’s series opener against the Mets.
Hader has generally avoided pitching three times in three days, and he shied away from it last month in San Francisco in a similar situation. It’s not that he can’t do it, he says.
“The biggest thing is reading the body,” Hader said. “Health is important. At the time, it’s easy to do things like that. But it’s more thinking about the longevity of that. It’s 162 games that we have to play. So, you blow it out too early and you’re not available at the late-end of the season, it’s no use, right?”
Evidently, it was finally time for Hader — and the Padres — to step on the gas pedal. And now a familiar question looms.
Things felt awfully bleak on Sunday, at the tail end of what Melvin called “just a miserable trip.” The Padres went 1-5 in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati and their season was spiraling. Now? After a sweep of the Angels, it all feels a bit rosier. They made up a couple games in the standings, too.
Is this the long-awaited breakout the Padres have clung to, their chance to finally play like the playoff contenders they so adamantly believe they still are?
“We’re in a place where we have to at this point,” Melvin said.
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