Padres hold on to beat Rockies, capture eighth win in a row

DENVER — It was stressful like September should be. It was crazy like Coors Field almost always is.

“Coors Field special right there,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said afterward. “A lot of hits, walks, crazy bounces. One last bounce went our way at the end.”

That about summed up a the Padres’ 8-7 victory over the Rockies on Monday night.

Other than to say the final score is the bottom line now more than ever.

“Right now, we’ve got music playing, and we’re happy because we won the game,” Casey Mize said. “Because the scoreboard matters.”

That scoreboard got a workout between the fifth and eighth innings, as the Padres saw the 6-1 lead they built in the first three innings melt into a back-and-forth mind-bender that required Mason Miller to earn his 37th save.

In the beginning of what ended up becoming their eighth consecutive victory, Jackson Merrill kept hitting. Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado kept hitting home runs. Mize kept getting in trouble but mostly getting out of it.

And then, the hits stopped for a while. Kyle Hart did not get out of trouble. The Rockies kept coming.

They scored three times in the sixth to get within a run. The Padres scored once in the top of the seventh. The Rockies made it a one-run game again in their half of the seventh. The Padres scored a run in the eighth. So did the Rockies.

in the ninth, Miller survived a one-out single lined off his calf to strike out the next batter and finish the game when Machado fielded a high chopper behind the mound and threw out speedy Adael Amador at first base.

“That was a sick play,” Miller said. “I thought there was no chance, but when you’ve got an arm like his, it’s always possible.”

At the conclusion of all that, the Padres had matched their season-best win streak and kept themselves 2½ games ahead of the Diamondbacks in the race for the National League’s final playoff spot.

The first win in the Padres’ streak came against the Yankees, who are headed to the postseason. The past seven have come against three teams that entered Monday a combined 79 games below .500.

The worst of those was the Rockies, who on Monday lost their eighth consecutive game and fell to 55-95.

They created an abundance of traffic against Mize, who did not have a clean inning.

But the Rockies scored in just the first and fifth innings against Mize, and he left with the Padres ahead 6-2.

Hart replaced Mize to start the sixth and got the first out before walking two batters and surrendering a triple to Jake McCarthy that made it 6-4.

Bradgley Rodriguez took over for Hart and got the second out, a grounder that scored McCarthy. Hunter Goodman then tripled before Rodriguez retired TJ Rumfield on a groundout.

That woke the Padres’ bats just enough, as they added a crucial run in each of the next two innings.

“Huge, just to give our relievers a little bit of cushion in this environment,” Stammen said. “It’s a little easier not to have to be perfect.”

The Padres pushed their lead back to two runs in the seventh when Dustin Harris walked, stole second base, went to third on a wild pitch and scored on Ty France’s third hit of the game.

But Rodriguez’s first pitch in the seventh was hit over the tall right wall by former San Diego State standout Cole Carrigg.

Rodriguez retired the next three batters on seven pitches to preserve the 7-6 lead.

Singles by Xander Bogaerts and Freddy Fermin and a two-out double by Dustin Harris made it 8-6.

Adrian Morejón surrendered a single by Ezequiel Tovar to start the eighth, and the Rockies scored again when Norby hit a fly ball off the wall in right field just inside the painted yellow foul line.

To recap, the Rockies outscored the Padres 6-2 over the final five innings after the Padres outscored them 6-1 in the first three innings.

“We went up 6-1, you want to put teams away,” France said. “That’s a scrappy team over there. They put good at-bats together and put themselves in a position to make a comeback. You’re never out of it here. So, gotta tack on as much as you can.”

Mize had a lot of early support, though not enough to be entirely comfortable at the mile-high ballpark where balls fly over outfield walls and also frequently fall for base hits in the spacious outfield grass.

The Padres scored their first six runs against right-hander Tomoyuki Sugano, who held them to two runs over six innings at Petco Park on April 10, and 12 days later at Coors Field allowed a run in 5 ⅔ innings and got the Rockies’ only victory in 10 games in the season series.

Machado’s second home run in two days gave the Padres a 1-0 lead in the first inning.

The Rockies briefly tied the game on a pair of two-out hits in the bottom of the inning.

The Padres’ four-run second inning began with Merrill lining a single to right field and going to second base on Bogaerts’ one-out walk. Both runners moved up two bases on Jake Cronenworth’s single grounded through the right side, and Bogaerts scored on Fermin’s sacrifice fly to center field.

Tatis followed Fermin to the plate and added two more runs when he sent a fastball up and over the middle into a giant tree in the evergreen forest beyond center field.

Another single by Merrill drove in France, who had doubled, to make it 6-1 in the third.

The Rockies did not score after a leadoff double in their half of the second or another one to start their half of the third. Nor did they capitalize on having runners on first and second with one out in the fourth.

They finally cracked Mize again in the fifth on a one-out double by Norby and a single by Rumfield that made it 6-2.

Goodman had walked between the two hits, but Mize stranded the two runners by retiring the next two batters he faced.

So much happened after that. But Mize (6-9, 3.69) got the win, and the Padres got the victory.

All the rest was a means to then end the Padres seek: securing a postseason spot over the regular season’s final two weeks.

“It’s just the time of year — the time of year where you know you gotta win,” France said. “Especially the position that we’re in in this kind of a race, wins are all that are important, and it doesn’t matter how you do it. You just gotta win.”

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