[Baltimore Sun] Padres sweep Braves from wild-card series, advance to face Dodgers
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The Padres kept going, so they are still going.
In ways both exhilarating and worrisome, Wednesday night’s 5-4 victory that swept the Braves from the National League wild-card series, was emblematic of how the Padres have operated all season.
A five-run second inning, their starting pitcher exiting with elbow “tightness” and four-plus innings of survival by five relievers provided the highs and the sighs on a fraught night for the Padres and the 47,705 that packed Petco Park.
When catcher Kyle Higashioka caught Travis d’Arnaud’s foul pop-up while tripping over first baseman Donovan Solano for the final out, Padres players climbed the railing. After letting out a loud cheer, the crowd broke into a “Beat L.A.” chant.
For the third time in five years, the Padres will play the Dodgers in the National League Division Series, this one beginning Saturday in Los Angeles.
But as the Padres hugged and donned NLDS T-shirts on the field and prepared to spray champagne in the clubhouse, there was also concern.
Joe Musgrove, who missed 2½ months from the end of May to mid-August with various elbow maladies, departed the game with what the team called “right elbow tightness” in the top of the fourth inning.
Musgrove had retired nine consecutive batters when, after throwing a 2-1 curveball to Matt Olson, catcher Kyle Higashioka immediately walked toward the mound with pitching coach Ruben Niebla starting from the dugout seconds later. Athletic trainer Ben Fraser and manager Mike Shildt followed.
After a conference of about a minute, Shildt patted Musgrove on the chest, and the right-hander walked toward the Padres dugout with Fraser.
Bryan Hoeing replaced Musgrove and retired Olson on a pop up before yielding a lead-off homer to Jorge Soler in the fifth inning.
Jeremiah Estrada began the sixth and allowed a single with one out and another with two. He departed with two outs and runners at the corners and left-handed batter Olson due up.
Left-hander Tanner Scott came in to face the Braves’ cleanup hitter and stranded the runners when Olson lined out to left fielder Jurickson Profar.
Scott followed a lead-off walk to Soler in the seventh with three straight outs.
Jason Adam surrendered a single to Orlando Arcia and a home run to Michael Harris II before getting three outs in the eighth.
Robert Suarez, the closer who near the end of the regular season blew three of six save chances, then converted his fourth in a row by xx in the ninth.
What the Padres did to win Wednesday might have been surprising if they had not done something like it a fair amount over the past six months.
That’s their thing. It doesn’t matter what happens before what happens matters.
On Wednesday, they failed to score in the first inning after having the bases loaded with no outs.
An inning later, they scored five runs after having no one on with two outs.
In successive at-bats in the first inning, Manny Machado struck out and Jackson Merrill grounded into a fielder’s choice on a first-pitch sweeper that was barely above the ground. In the second inning, Machado broke a 1-1 tie with a two-run double and Merrill made it 5-1 with a two-run triple.
The five-run inning, which began with Higashioka’s second home run in two nights, was the Padres’ second in four games but also just their second in 60 games. To that point, they had scored at least five runs in an inning an MLB-leading 12 times.
That is the 2024 Padres.
Sometimes they falter. But they don’t stay down. And they seem capable of anything.
Before Musgrove settled into being dominant right up to the point he departed, the Braves ambushed him in the first inning when Michael Harris II lined the game’s first pitch down the right field line for a double, went to third on a groundout by Ozzie Albies and scored on a lineout to left field by Marcel Ozuna.
The Padres began the bottom of the first by loading the bases without getting a ball out of the infield and then continuing to not get the ball out of the infield and failing to score.
Luis Arraez and Fernando Tatis Jr. reached on infield singles — Arraez on a slow bouncer up the middle and Tatis with a 100 mph line drive off Braves starter Max Fried’s left hip. Profar followed with a dribbler to the right side of the mound that Fried picked up and threw too late to second.
The potential for a big inning deflated pretty quickly.
Machado struck out on three pitches. Merrill then grounded the first pitch he saw to first base, where Olson fielded the ball and threw home to force out Arraez. And Merrill was forced out at second on a grounder to shortstop by Xander Bogaerts.
As had happened for a long stretch in their 4-0 win in Game 1, the Padres didn’t do much after the second inning.
But in the postseason, the only important thing is the result.
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