Padres come back to beat Marlins, shave magic number to 3

Jeff Sanders, The San Diego Union-Tribune on Sep 20, 2026

Published in Baseball

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SAN DIEGO — San Diego Padres manager Craig Stammen asked Mason Miller to fetch five outs Saturday night.

The well-rested closer was not quite up to the task, but the Padres aren’t flinching much lately.

Miller served up a game-tying homer in the ninth inning, but David Morgan stranded the automatic runner in the 10th and rookie Ethan Salas’ pinch-hit single helped the Padres walk off with a 7-6 win. The team’s fourth straight victory came in front of a sellout crowd of 43,433 at Petco Park.

A wild pitch moved the Padres’ automatic runner to third base in the 10th inning.

After Sung-Mun Song struck out, Salas bounced a single through the middle of the infield for the game-winner.

The win shaved Padres’ magic number to 3. The Arizona Diamondbacks snapped a three-game skid by walking off against the New York Yankees.

The Padres moved up in their quest to host an NL Wild Card Series: A Philadelphia Phillies loss dropped them into the sixth seed. At 86-69, the Padres and Chicago Cubs are virtually tied for the No. 4 seed, but the Padres lost the season series and would need to finish ahead of Chicago to host the initial best-of-three series.

Either way, the Padres feel good about the way they’re trending even if they needed a comeback to overcome another shaky start from Casey Mize (3 IP, 5 ER).

Their 12 wins this month are tied for the most in the majors. They began Saturday with an .848 OPS in September, 40 points better than the next-best team (Milwaukee).

So it wasn’t a surprise to see them surge back into Saturday’s contest after Mize was chased after walking five batters and throwing just 39 of his 74 pitches for strikes.

Especially because it was against these Marlins in July when the offense really kicked into a new gear after dropping series in Kansas City and Atlanta to start the second half.

“I think the biggest thing was we had to get our offense going,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said of a 35-16 run that began with a sweep in Miami in July, “and the offense started to show signs of that in Atlanta, and even the last game in Kansas City, and we weren’t able to turn those into a lot of wins. I think we went 2-3 in those five games, and then we got to Miami and that offense kept the momentum going, and we were able to win those three games. That just gave us the confidence that, yeah, we can turn the season around and we can make a push for the playoffs and beat some of these teams that were ahead of us at the time in the standings.”

Samad Taylor’s second career homer started the Padres on the comeback trail Saturday, shaving the Padres’ lead briefly to 3-1 in the second inning. Mize coughed up two runs in the third inning, but a run-scoring balk from Eury Perez (42/3 IP, 5 ER) keyed a three-run third and Fernando Tatis Jr. tied the game with a homer to lead off the fourth.

Two innings later, Dustin Harris doubled with one out and former Padres prospect Esteury Ruiz misplayed Ty France’s two-out line drive into a go-ahead double.

The Padres’ bullpen through eight innings locked down the game day after Mize’s early exit. Randy Vásquez threw two scoreless innings. Bradgley Rodriguez fanned two in a perfect sixth. Then Adrián Morejón stranded two Yuki Matsui runners in the seventh and Miller was called on in the eighth with runners on the corners after Morejón followed a strikeout with two walks.

Miller hadn’t pitched since saving a one-run game at Coors Field on Monday.

He was especially sharp, striking out Heriberto Hernandez on a 103.3 mph four-seamer to end a six-pitch at-bat and then Kyle Stowers on three pitches after an 89.7 mph slider froze him.

Miller struck out the first batter of the ninth, too, but Griffin Conine yanked a 102.1 mph, down-and-in fastball over the wall in right to hand the Padres’ All-Star closer his third blown save.

Mize has a 6.64 ERA after failing to complete four innings for the second time in nine starts since the trade deadline.

A right ankle sprain forced him from his fourth start after 22/3 innings. He also allowed a career-high eight runs in 31/3 innings in his Padres debut. He turned in a pair of quality starts between those two outings, but Mize has largely struggled with traffic as he has a 1.62 WHIP as a Padre after posting a 0.99 as a Tiger.

“He’s a good pitcher,” Stammen said before Saturday’s game. “Eventually things are going to even out. It’s never easy to be traded as we’ve talked about. The more comfortable we can make him, hopefully the better the results are out on the mound, but we trust him.”

On Saturday, Mize stranded two walks in the first inning. He allowed a run-scoring fielder’s choice ahead of Otto Lopez’s two-run homer in the second inning, walked two more batters before getting out of that inning and allowed his fifth walk to score in the Marlins’ two-run third inning.

By the time he threw out Ruiz trying to steal third base, he’d thrown just 39 of his 74 pitches for strikes in digging the Padres in a 5-1 hole after the top of the third.