SAN DIEGO — It was always about the payoff in the playoffs.
And on a hot October Wednesday afternoon when it appeared it had been blooped and bumbled away, the guys who became Padres in August came through.
The trade deadline pickups picked themselves up and propelled the Padres to an 8-5 victory over the Phillies at Petco Park that evened the National League Championship Series at a game apiece.
Josh Bell, Brandon Drury and Juan Soto, the latter two having contributed to a messy second inning that had the Padres down 4-0, drove in six of the Padres’ seven runs that flipped a four-run deficit into a three-run lead between the second and fifth innings.
Drury’s home run leading off the bottom of the second began the comeback, and his two-run single broke a 4-4 tie in the fifth inning. Bell homered a pitch after Drury in the second and grounded an RBI single to right field three pitches after Drury’s single in the fifth. Soto’s RBI double, which followed an RBI single Austin Nola hit off his brother, had tied the game.
Six of the Padres’ eight runs were scored off Aaron Nola, who had previously allowed just one earned run in 12 2/3 innings this postseason. The seventh run came against former Padres’ reliever Brad Hand, who relieved Nola and hit Ha-Seong Kim before surrendering the singles by Drury and Bell. Manny Machado’s solo homer off David Robertson in the seventh provided the Padres’ final run.
The Padres have scored in just four of their past 29 innings, but two of those have been five-run innings. (The other was in the seventh on Saturday, as the Padres came back to beat the Dodgers, 5-3, and win the NL Division Series.)
The Padres got five innings from Blake Snell on Wednesday and got him the win when they scored their runs while he was still the pitcher of record.
Nick Martinez allowed a double to Bryce Harper to start the sixth before retiring the next six batters. Robert Suarez allowed a leadoff homer to Rhys Hoskins and then a single by Realmuto in the eighth before getting out of the inning with help from a double play. Josh Hader struck out the side in the ninth, giving him eight straight strikeouts over his past three outings.
None of the three hitters who became Padres at the trade deadline has lived up to expectations they arrived with and everyone else heaped on them — anticipation created by what they had done in their careers and the strong seasons they were having before the Padres acquired them Aug. 2.
All hit well below their career and season numbers during the regular season. Drastically so, even.
It sure looked for a time like the past two days here would be remembered in large part for what the trio didn’t do and wasn’t asked to do.
Bell’s ninth-inning strikeout Tuesday ended an 0-for-4 day and ended the game, as manager Bob Melvin chose to leave Drury on the bench.
The reality is that aside from Bell’s first-inning home run in Game 1 of the wild-card series on Oct. 7 in New York, watching either of them bat has been an excruciating exercise for the Padres. Bell and Drury entered Wednesday a combined 4 for 38 in the postseason.
Soto, who came to San Diego with Bell from Washington in arguably the biggest trade-deadline deal in history, batted .236/.388/.390 in 52 games with the Padres. That is a 10-point dip in batting average, 20-point drop in on-base percentage and 95-point plummet in slugging percentage from how he was going through Aug. 1. He entered Wednesday batting .226/.294/.258 in the postseason.
Soto and Drury had contributed to what might have been a two- or three-run second inning for the Phillies into a four-run inning in which the Padres were booed twice.
They were charged with just their second error of the playoffs, but the sequence of events was far more brutal than that.
Snell had to throw 37 pitches in an inning in which he gave up five hits, none harder than 95.7 mph. And that was a “double” that would have been the inning’s second out if Soto had not lost it in the sun that was shining high beyond the western side of the ballpark.
The trouble began when Harper flared a full-count slider to left-center field at 71.9 mph. Nick Castellanos followed by sending a fastball on the insider corner high into the air to shallow right field, where it dropped for a single. Alex Bohm then singled to right field on what in this inning qualified as a line drive at 84.9 mph. That scored Harper and moved Castellanos to third, and when Soto’s throw bounced past Machado, Bohm went to second base. The error was on Soto, though Machado has caught the same throw many times.
Snell struck out Jean Segura and appeared to yield a sacrifice fly to Matt Vierling, but Soto lost it in flight and was ducking as the ball landed about five feet to his left as boos rained down. That brought Castellanos home and moved Bohm to third.
Edmundo Sosa’s bat broke on a single to left field that appeared to fool left fielder Jurickson Profar, who stopped and had the ball drop in front of him. Boos accompanied Bohm home and Vierling to third.
The final run of the inning scored on a Kyle Schwarber grounder to Drury at first base. Even with Vierling running on contact, it appeared Drury would have had a play at home had he not bobbled the ball before picking it up and making the out at first base.
But that was it. The comeback was on, and the Padres played clean to the end.
And the Phillies’ only threat, with a runner on first and no outs after Hoskins’ homer in the eighth, was quashed when Harper hit a grounder to Machado, who was standing near shortstop in the shift. Machado fielded the ball while going to his right away from second base, threw across his body to Kim covering the bag. Kim threw to first to complete the double play. Suarez struck out Castellanos to end the inning.
