DETROITDETROIT — After two days of bad luck and a good bit of bad baseball, playing a bad team paid off for the Padres.
A blown save and a whole bunch of futility in the batter’s box could be dismissed after the Padres scored three times in the 10th inning, the final two runs coming on Jorge Alfaro’s two-out single, to beat the Tigers 6-4 on Tuesday night at Comerica Park. (Box score.)
“We lost a battle yesterday,” said Nick Martinez, who pitched the final half-inning for the save. “But today I felt like we had some really good at-bats, team looked really good today — like yesterday never happened. The second half (of the season), every win is big. It doesn’t matter who you’re facing. So we want to make that push and get rolling.”
Every time they win a game with a comeback or some sort of resiliency, the Padres express their hope it is the impetus for some sort of swell.
Maybe this will do it, or perhaps it was just a victory over a team going nowhere that fought back but couldn’t get out of its own way in the end.
The Padres loaded the bases and scored their first run in the 10th without getting a hit — but with help from two hit batters.
Jake Cronenworth was hit on the upper arm by the first pitch of the inning from Tigers reliever Gregory Soto. Manny Machado followed with a grounder that shortstop Javy Bàez fielded and threw wide and high of first base. That left Machado at first, Cronenworth at second and Jurickson Profar, who began the inning at second, on third.
Manager Bob Melvin said Machado tweaked his left ankle — the one that kept him out of nine games last month — on the play at first and his fitness to play Wednesday’s series finale would be determined before the game.
After Esteury Ruiz struck out, Luke Voit drove in his third run of the game by taking a 98 mph fastball off his back knee.
Rookie Matthew Batten’s strikeout was the second out and the last contribution by Soto.
Alfaro lined the first pitch from Jason Foley to right field to drive in Cronenworth and Machado. He did so by doing something the Padres don’t do all that often lately and that only he and Voit did Tuesday — got a hit with a runner in scoring position.
“Simplify,” Alfaro said. “Sometimes we just get in trouble when we like (try) to hit the ball a mile away.”
Martinez held the Tigers to a run in the bottom of the 10th to close out the victory — the Padres’ first in eight all-time games in Detroit — and earn his fourth save. The previous three were in games he pitched three innings at the end.
“Felt like a big boy save today,” Martinez said.
“It was big,” Melvin said. “… Seems like it’s hard for us to get a win right now. Makes the resolve a little bit more. Even more rewarding when you come back and put together an offensive inning like we did to put it away.”
Martinez got the opportunity because Taylor Rogers blew a save and the Padres offense failed to blow open a game it seemed it could.
Rogers allowed a leadoff single, got two outs, walked a batter and then gave up a tying single to Riley Greene in the ninth.
But before Rogers suffered his first blown save in his past six tries and failed to get to his major league-leading 29th save, Padres batters spent six innings looking as if they had run up against six pitchers named Mariano Rivera.
After taking a 3-0 lead in the third inning against San Diego State product Garrett Hill — on a two-run double by Voit that traveled an estimated 427 feet and a run-scoring double by Alfaro that went 413 feet — the Padres had just three baserunners and went 1-for-19 leading up to the 10th inning.
“Especially against this team,” Voit lamented. “I mean, we had a bunch more chances earlier the game, and we let them hang around. … That’s when we have to put our foot on the gas to try to score three or four more runs or even one, just to give us a cushion.”
So, against a team that dropped to 20 games below .500, the Padres did just enough.
A night after playing sloppily in the field and on the basepaths in a lopsided loss to one of the major leagues’ worst teams, they played crisply and error-free.
And a night after starting pitcher Sean Manaea allowed nine runs and promising rookie pitcher MacKenzie Gore departed with a balky elbow, Mike Clevinger provided seven strong innings.
The Tigers had three hits through six innings against Clevinger. They got three — and two runs — in the seventh.
Miguel Cabrera led off with a double he grounded through the open space at third base against a shift, and Jeimer Candelario followed by pulling a 2-0 cutter down the line and just over the right-field wall.
After Jonathan Schoop’s one-out single, Clevinger finished the seventh with his fourth and fifth strikeouts of the night.
It was the first time since 2020 that Clevinger, who had Tommy John surgery in November of that year and missed the ’21 season, completed seven innings.
Luis Garcia escaped the eighth after a pair of two-out singles put runners at the corners.
That’s when it got wild. Or maybe it’s just the Padres’ normal right now.
“We’re going through a period where we’re having to fight our way out of a tough stretch,” Melvin said. “It seems like it’s getting a little bit harder and harder to win games. But should make you tougher down the road.”
