TORONTO — Manny Machado is so locked in he can beat a good pitcher on a good pitch with half a bat.
His flared broken-bat single in the fifth inning was all the offense the Padres needed in a 2-0 victory over the Blue Jays on Wednesday night.
Yu Darvish went six innings, allowing four hits and striking out seven before three relievers finished off the Padres’ second victory in two games at the Rogers Centre.
The victory got them to 3-3 on this 10-game trip and back to within four games of .500, at 46-50.
The night also served to further restore the good name of the Padres bullpen, which was among MLB’s best for the season’s first 2½ months and its worst for most of the past month.
A scoreless inning apiece from Steven Wilson, Nick Martinez and Josh Hader accounted for a second game in a row in which no runs were scored against a Padres reliever. This, after they had allowed at least one run in 17 consecutive games.
Machado’s 21 balls put in play with an exit velocity of 100 mph or greater are most in the major leagues this month. But all he needed was enough of a swing (and enough of a bat) to flare a ball at 76.3 mph into center field in the fifth inning.
Blue Jays starter José Berríos ended up allowing just four hits in six innings. The right-hander struck out nine and was every bit as tricky to hit as those statistics suggest.
Half of his four walks and his lone hit batter came in the fifth.
The deciding damage was set up by Berrios walking Trent Grisham and hitting Ha-Seong Kim with no outs. The damage was exacerbated when, after Fernando Tatis Jr. struck out and with Juan Soto at the plate, Grisham took off for third base an instant before Berrios turned and threw to second base. Shortstop Bo Bichette caught Berríos’ throw and threw wide of third to the home plate side as Grisham slid in head first on the outfield side of the bag. As that unfolded, Kim took off to second to complete the double steal.
After throwing another ball to Soto to fall behind 3-0, the Blue Jays intentionally walked him to bring up Machado.
One of the hottest hitters in the major leagues in July, who had just missed clearing the wall for his 10th home run of the month in his previous at-bat, watched a sinker low and well off the plate and took a sinker at the bottom of the zone for a strike before swinging at a sinker on the inner edge about bellybutton high.
The 94 mph pitch sawed off Machado’s bat just above the handle, but the swing was so smooth and true that the ball carried 213 feet, over the infield and onto the artificial grass in front of center field Kevin Kiermaier.
Grisham jogged in and Kim raced around third and to score, giving the Padres a 2-0 lead.
Scoring first has generally been an entree to winning. They entered Wednesday’s game 37-17 when doing so. They had, however, lost three straight in which they scored first in Philadelphia over the weekend.
This time, with three innings to go after Darvish (7-6, 4.36) was finished, the bullpen did not crack.
