Padres go long for win against Athletics

Kevin Acee, The San Diego Union-Tribune on May 23, 2026

Published in Baseball

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SAN DIEGO — The consensus belief is that the San Diego Padres have to start hitting a lot more in order to maintain winning at anywhere the pace they have through the season’s first 50 games.

For now, the team with the major leagues’ lowest batting average and its fifth-best record is just making its hits count.

The Padres continue to not hit very much at all. But when they do, the ball is often going over the wall.

Hitting home runs is all they did for most of Friday’s 7-3 victory over the Athletics.

Before the Padres (30-20) scored three times on four singles and a sacrifice fly in the eighth inning, they had come back twice and taken a lead on Manny Machado’s game-tying two-run homer in the first inning, Nick Castellanos’ game-tying solo homer in the fifth inning and Ramón Laureano’s go-ahead solo homer in the seventh inning.

That ran their streak to nine consecutive runs via home runs after all five of their runs in their series against the Los Angeles Dodgers earlier this week came on homers.

Going back nine games, 19 of their 33 runs have been driven in by home runs.

They are batting just better than .200 in those games, but they are 6-3 in that span.

For the second straight game, they were down from the start.

The Padres trailed for good one pitch into Wednesday’s 4-0 loss to the Dodgers when Shohei Ohtani led off with a home run.

It took four pitches for them to be down Friday.

The first two Athletics batters reached base against Walker Buehler — Carlos Cortes on a single bounced through the middle and Nick Kurtz on a double to left-center field. Cortes raced home on Kurtz’s single, and Kurtz advanced the final 180 feet on successive groundouts.

But for the second time in three games, Machado hit a two-run homer that tied the game in the first inning.

A double by Zack Gelof and a single by Henry Bolte at the start of the fourth inning put the Athletics back ahead.

But Castellanos launched a ball high off the corner of the Western Metal building just fair and above the third balcony to tie the game in the fifth.

In between the Padres’ two home runs, soft-throwing left-hander Jeffrey Springs retired 10 of the 11 batters he faced. The only interruption was a walk to Rodolfo Durán leading off the third inning. A line drive to center field by Fernando Tatis Jr. and double-play grounder by Miguel Andujar ended that inning quickly.

Padres starter Buehler, who had allowed 10 baserunners and four runs in 11 innings over his past two starts, was trying to control traffic all night.

The Athletics put at least one of their first two batters on base in all five of his innings and three times had both reach base.

Bradgley Rodriguez replaced Buehler to start the sixth and got two quick outs before a pair of singles and a walk loaded the bases, and Adrian Morejón was called on to get out of the jam.

The left-hander did so with a strikeout of pinch-hitter Colby Thomas and then retired the Athletics’ 2-3-4 batters in order in the seventh.

Laureano’s one-out blast to right field put the Padres ahead 4-3.