Original article can be found here.
Lars Nootbaar homered on the game’s first pitch Friday night and Nolan Arenado added his 30th homer as the visiting Arizona Diamondbacks tightened the National League wild-card race with an 11-4 rout of the San Diego Padres.
Arizona (86-74) scored in six of the first seven innings to earn its sixth straight win and move within a game of Philadelphia (87-73) for the final NL wild-card spot with two games remaining. Should the teams finish with identical records, Arizona would win the tiebreaker based on a better intra-division record. The sides split their six meetings this year.
The Diamondbacks rapped out eight hits on Friday and worked eight walks from five San Diego pitchers.
Brandon Pfaadt (8-3) allowed nine hits and four runs in 7 2/3 innings to beat the Padres for the third time this year. He walked two and fanned seven. Casey Mize (6-10) absorbed the loss, giving up seven runs on seven hits and two walks with one strikeout in just four innings.
Despite the loss, San Diego (89-71) moved within a game of clinching home-field advantage in the NL wild-card round on Tuesday. The Padres are 1 1/2 games ahead of the Chicago Cubs, who were swept in a doubleheader at Boston, and two games up on Philadelphia.
The Padres were aiming to clinch home field, but Mize couldn’t cope with the Arizona offense. After allowing Nootbaar’s 403-foot blast to right-center, Mize was rocked for an RBI triple by Geraldo Perdomo and a sacrifice fly from Corbin Carroll to make it 3-0 before the first inning ended.
Jordan Lawlar upped the advantage to 4-0 in the top of the second by lofting a solo homer to right, his sixth. San Diego pulled two runs back in its half of the second via Luis Campusano’s RBI groundout and Jake Cronenworth’s run-scoring single.
Arenado belted a towering two-run shot in the third to restore a four-run lead, followed by Gabriel Moreno’s RBI single to center in the fourth. Perdomo ripped a three-run double off Kyle Hart in the sixth for a 10-2 cushion.
Lawlar’s double-play ball in the seventh finished the Arizona scoring. Cronenworth plated a run in the bottom of the seventh on a fielder’s choice grounder and Sung-Mun Song singled home the Padres’ last run in the eighth.
–Field Level Media
Original article
Comments