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Yu Darvish, Manny Machado get their jobs done as Padres snap 5-game skid

Jeff Sanders, The San Diego Union-Tribune on

Published in Baseball

As Yu Darvish rocked and fired through his warm-up pitches, a beat plenty familiar to Nick Martinez poured into Petco Park. Bakermat’s “Baiana” had been Martinez’s warm-up song of choice both years in San Diego. Naturally, the 33-year-old right-hander laughed from the visiting dugout in appreciation of the nod from a former teammate ahead of the first inning Tuesday night.

The hospitality did not extend much further.

Darvish threw five shutout innings in his return from the injured list, Manny Machado avenged an early wasted opportunity with a bases-clearing double during an odd fifth inning and the Padres snapped a season-worst five-game skid with a 6-4 win in front of a crowd of 36,769.

The formula was simple even if Tuesday’s path turned out rather unorthodox:

Get out of the first inning without giving up a homer for a change and maintain a lead for longer than a half-inning for the first time this homestand, both of which had proven tall tasks during this funk that followed the team home from its Coors Field meltdown.

Even in his first start since returning from the neck tightness that forced him to miss two turns in the rotation, Darvish was an easy pitcher to rally behind.

 

“The biggest thing is to have him healthy,” Machado said. “If he can stay healthy all year, you know, obviously getting him 15 days off to kind of like regroup and get right is huge. So having him tonight go up there, you couldn’t ask for a better man to get us back on track.”

Toward that end, Darvish got through the first without giving up a run, much less a hit, and then stacked four more zeros after that, scattering three strikeouts and three hits without issuing a walk.

The Padres’ bullpen stumbled in the sixth and seventh innings, but that odd fifth at the expense of an old friend and an insurance run off Cincinnati’s bullpen provided enough of a cushion for Yuki Matsui (1⅔ IP) and Robert Suarez (1 IP) to secure the win.

In his first start at Petco Park since signing with the Reds, Martinez was on the ropes in the first inning, allowing a leadoff single to Jurickson Profar, walking Fernando Tatis Jr. on four pitches and booting Jake Cronenworth’s comebacker to load the bases.

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©2024 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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