A video montage that played on the Petco Park video boards late in games the Padres trailed throughout their first four home stands featured myriad offensive highlights from last season and a compilation of television commentators praising the team's lineup.
Near the conclusion of the video, one of the talking heads said, "This is going to be a lineup that almost any inning can put up multiple runs — like that."
A snap was heard at that point.
The video was not played during their most recent home stand.
Just in time for it to begin being accurate.
The Padres on Tuesday night beat the Guardians 6-3 by continuing to put up big innings and score repeatedly in a way they had not through most of the season's first two months.
It was the 10th time in their past 20 games that the Padres scored at least six runs, something they did so just 12 times in their first 46 games.
The Padres scored four runs in the first inning, three of them when Gary Sánchez hit his sixth home run in 13 games since being acquired off waivers on May 29. Fernando Tatis Jr. hit his team-leading 13th home run of the season in the second inning.
Joe Musgrove allowed three runs in his six innings, and three relievers closed out the Padres' fourth victory in five games.
As encouraging as anything for the Padres, who got back to within two games of .500, is that they are scoring repeatedly — within games and even within the same inning.
Through their first 46 games, the Padres' average of 3.8 runs per game was the fifth lowest in the major leagues. They were 20-26 to that point.
Over their past 19 games, they rank sixth at 5.25 runs per game. They are 12-8 in that span.
They probably need to win at a greater clip than that going forward if they are to qualify for the postseason.
But it is undoubtedly a positive sign that they are scoring more, more often.
The Padres scored four runs (and never more) in an inning once in their first 46 games, and that was at a tiny ballpark with artificial turf in the thin air of Mexico City.
They have done it twice since, in addition to scoring five runs in one inning and seven runs in another.
The latest outburst came early Tuesday night.
The bottom of the first began with Tatis and Juan Soto drawing full-count walks. Two productive fly balls followed, the first by Manny Machado, which moved Tatis to third, and then a sacrifice fly by Xander Bogaerts to put the Padres up 1-0.
With two outs, Jake Cronenworth singled, and Sánchez followed with his sixth home run in 44 at-bats since the Padres claimed him off waivers on May 29 to make it 4-0.
Josh Bell, who homered three times in 177 at-bats for the Padres last season, got one of those runs back by hitting a high fly ball that cleared the right field wall in the second inning.
Tatis' two-out homer in the bottom of the second put the Padres back up by four.
After Bell's homer, Musgrove retired nine of the next 10 batters he faced before the Guardians added a run in the fifth on two hard grounders off the gloves of the Padres' corner infielders. A leadoff single by Will Brennan that first baseman Cronenworth almost fielded and one-out double by Cam Gallagher that caromed off an attempted backhand by third baseman Machado put runners at second and third before Steven Kwan's gounder to the right side scored Brennan to make it 5-2.
The Padres responded to that run with another one in the bottom of the fifth on a leadoff infield single by Machado, wild pitch and a double by Bogaerts.
The Guardians got to 6-3 in the sixth inning after José Ramirez and Josh Naylor singled to start the inning. Ramirez moved to third on a fielder's choice grounder by Bell and scored on Tyler Freeman's sacrifice fly.
That was it for Musgrove, who turned in his fourth consecutive quality start. He has allowed six runs (five earned) in those four starts (23 1/3 innings).
Steven Wilson, Nick Martinez and Josh Hader threw a scoreless inning apiece, with Hader earning his 16th save.
_____
