Pitching falls in place as Padres bounce back to blank Giants

Jeff Sanders, The San Diego Union-Tribune on Aug 1, 2026

Published in Baseball

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

SAN DIEGO — Not even the Padres believed they’d win out the rest of the season.

But one loss could not — we repeat, could not— become two.

Not at this juncture.

Jase Bowen hit his first big-league homer, his teammates chased Giants rookie Carson Whisenhunt in the fourth inning and the Padres, behind more chaos-theory pitching, blanked the Giants 7-0 on Friday night in front of a sellout crowd of 44,057.

Friday’s win pushed the Padres to within a game of the No. 3 wild-card Phillies, who lost their fourth straight game to cede the second wild-card spot to the rising Diamondbacks.

With Monday’s trade deadline approaching, the Padres had little time to waste spinning their wheels as they’d done for much of the last three months.

So they didn’t.

They scored in three of the first four innings to make things easy on the upside-down plan drawn up for the Giants’ lefty-heavy lineup.

Right-hander Bradgley Rodriguez took down the first three outs on 13 pitches, left-hander Yuki Matsui threw three shutout innings and right-hander Germán Márquez had a 6-0 lead by the time he finally climbed the mound in the fifth inning.

The cushion — thanks to Bowen’s homer, Luis Campusano collecting three of the team’s 12 hits and Ty France driving in three runs — made it all that much easier for Márquez to close the game with five shutout frames for his first career save.

The Padres seemed on the verge of knocking the left-handed Whisenhunt from the game from the first inning on.

The knockout finally arrived in the fourth, with France’s two-run single closing the book on the 25-year-old rookie.

A three-run rally began with Bowen pulling a 2-1 slider into the Western Metal Supply Co. building.

Fernando Tatis Jr. and Luis Rengifo followed with one-out walks to fetch Giants manager Tony Vitello from the dugout. Right-hander Adrian Houser got Manny Machado to pop out, but Tatis and Rengifo executed a double steal and France lined a ball to center to open up a 6-0 lead.

Whisenhunt had been on the ropes since a two-run first in which Tatis led off with a double and scored on Machado’s sacrifice fly to left. Luis Campusano plated the second run with a two-out single.

The Padres did not cash in either of their baserunners in the second, but they did plate one in the third after a pair of singles from France and Campusano and some fortunate sequencing on what looked like an inning-ending double-play ball off the bat of Xander Bogaerts.

With runners on first and third, the Padres’ slumping shortstop bounced a ball down the first base line. Rafael Devers collected the ball and stepped on first base for the forceout and then threw to second base. But with Bogaerts already retired, shortstop Willy Adames had to track down Campusano — who had slid early in the base path to remove himself from the play — to record the final out of the inning.

Padres manager Craig Stammen immediately asked for a review of the play, which determined that Jackson Merrill scored from third before Campusano was tagged out to end the inning.

_____