Six runs before Colorado could breathe
Manny Machado swung at the first good pitch he saw and put it in the seats. His 28th of the year, one out into the game, and San Diego had the lead at Coors Field overnight. TJ Rumfield answered in the bottom half with an RBI single, which turned out to be the only moment Colorado looked level all night.
The second inning did the damage. Jackson Merrill singled, Xander Bogaerts walked, Jake Cronenworth drove Merrill home, Freddy Fermin lifted a sacrifice fly, and then Fernando Tatis Jr. hit a ball 449 feet to dead centre. Number 22 for him, 5-1 for the Padres, and Tomoyuki Sugano was already looking at a long evening. Ty France doubled and scored on another Merrill single in the third to make it six.
Sugano (12-10) wore all of it across five innings. Casey Mize (6-9) gave San Diego five of his own, two runs on eight hits, and handed a four-run lead to the bullpen.
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Colorado refused to go quietly
The Rockies clawed back in stages. Connor Norby doubled in the fifth and came home on a Rumfield single. Jake McCarthy tripled two runs in during the sixth and scored on a groundout, and suddenly a 6-1 game was 6-5 with nine outs left.
France restored the two-run gap with a single in the seventh. Cole Carrigg took it straight back with a leadoff homer, his eighth. Dustin Harris doubled in a run in the eighth, Norby matched it in the bottom half, and Mason Miller walked into a one-run ninth for his 37th save of the season.
France and Merrill finished with three hits each, Cronenworth with two. Hunter Goodman had two for Colorado before leaving in the seventh with soreness in his right thumb.
What the streak is worth
Eight straight wins move San Diego to 82-68 and leave them a single game behind Philadelphia for the second National League wild card. That is the whole point of the run. The Padres were drifting three weeks ago and now they are close enough to smell a playoff slot with under two weeks of the regular season left.
Colorado sit at 55-95 and have lost eight in a row themselves, which is the sort of symmetry nobody in Denver wanted.
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