SAN FRANCISCO — The Padres spent three weeks playing teams that had losing records.
The long run of Reds and Pirates and Guardians and the like ended with their arrival in the Bay Area late Thursday night. The series that awaited them against the Giants would be a test.
Two one-run victories ensued on Friday and Saturday, and then on Sunday the Padres completed their first sweep at Oracle Park in nearly six years with a 10-1 victory.
The Padres had a season-high 17 hits, including three doubles and a triple by Manny Machado, MacKenzie Gore allowed one run in completing six innings for the first time, and the Giants looked a little bit like a bad team even as they remained four games above .500 after losing their fourth straight game.
The Padres have won four in a row as they return home to play the Brewers, who lead the National League Central and are part of a stretch in which the Padres play 16 of their next 19 games against teams that currently have winning records.
Sunday’s victory completed a 7-2 road trip. They are 27-14, giving them the second-best winning percentage (.659) in the National League, behind only the Dodgers’ .675 mark (27-13). The Padres are 17-7 away from Petco Park, the best road record in the major leagues.
Teams love happy flights. It’s just better to have won before getting in a confined space and hurtling through the air.
The flight home after 11 days was the shortest of the four they took on this trip through Atlanta, Philadelphia and San Francisco. It might have been the happiest as well.
Gore (3-1) generally cruised through his first quality start and the Padres’ major league-leading 22nd, yielding three hits, walking two and striking out six. The Giants scored on a walk, double and sacrifice fly in the fourth inning.
That answered the Padres’ five runs in the top of the fourth and made it 7-1.
By that time, eight Padres had hits and all nine starters had reached base. When Luke Voit singled in the sixth inning, all nine starters had a hit for the second time in four games. It was the fourth time this season the Padres scored in double digits.
By the eighth inning, Giants outfielder Luis Gonzalez was pitching. And he was their most effective arm of the day, retiring the Padres in order on five pitches, which caused a raucous celebration among a crowd that still pretty much filled the bayside ballpark.
The Padres scored a run in the first on Wil Myers’ RBI single, which scored Machado, who had doubled.
They scored in the second on a single by Ha-seong Kim, double by Austin Nola and Jake Cronenworth’s sacrifice fly.
After a break in the third, they had their biggest inning in 23 games. It began with Nola walking, Jose Azocar hitting a single, Cronenworth hitting an RBI single and Machado smacking his second double to bring in two more runs before the first out was made.
The second out would have followed if Giants first baseman Wilmer Flores had not bobbled Eric Hosmer’s slow roller twice. Hosmer then advanced on a passed ball and scored along with Machado on a double Myers bounced over the left-field wall.
Machado’s two-out triple to right-center was followed by Jurickson Profar’s RBI double in the fifth.
Myers and Voit started the sixth with singles. Both would score, Myers on Kim’s double and Voit on a groundout by Azocar.
Machado led off the seventh on with a ground ball that Giants shortstop Brandon Crawford tried to backhand but had go off his glove. As the ball bounced into shallow left field and came to a stop, Machado hustled to second for his career-high fourth extra-base hit. He is the first player in MLB history to hit three doubles and a triple while also walking and scoring three runs in a game.
Machado was stranded in the seventh, and the Padres would get just one more hit — Cronenworth’s double in the ninth, their ninth extra-base hit of the game, three off the team record.
