Fernando Tatis Jr. contributed like an All-Star on Sunday night.
The erstwhile Padres sparkplug scored their first run and drove in their second in a 4-1 victory over the Rangers at Petco Park.
Earlier in the day, it was announced Tatis had been named a National League All-Star for the third time in his career, something that seemed inevitable when he finished May with a 1.011 OPS but not all that likely when he began July 120 points lower than that.
He has spent more than two months trying to get himself out of one of the most prolonged slumps of his career and entered Sunday’s game hitting .212 with a .674 OPS since May 2, a span of 57 games. Only for portions of 2023, the season he returned after missing all of ‘22 due to injury and suspension, had Tatis ever struggled that much for that long.
But he went 2-for-3 and walked twice Sunday, providing the kind of ignition he has only sporadically been able to of late but that he — and everyone in the organization and probably in all of baseball — knows he can every night.
The victory finished off a series win to start the season’s longest homestand, which has seven games remaining and will take the Padres (48-41) up to the All-Star break.
In Monday’s opener of their four-game series against the Diamondbacks, Yu Darvish will make his season debut after nearly three months rehabbing a balky right elbow.
The Padres filled Sunday’s rotation spot with a bullpen game, opened by David Morgan, covered with 3⅔ perfect innings in the middle by Kyle Hart and then finished off by their highest-leverage relievers — Jeremiah Estrada, Jason Adam, Adrian Morejón and Robert Suarez.
The same four had been used to close out Friday’s 3-2 victory over the Rangers. None of them had pitched in Saturday’s loss.
Estrada worked a 1-2-3 sixth. Adam, also named an NL All-Star on Sunday, worked around a two-out single in the seventh. Morejón did the same in the eighth, and Suarez earned his NL-best 25th save by setting the Rangers down in order in the ninth.
The night began with Morgan navigating quite an adventure in his first time pitching in the first inning as a professional.
The Rangers had a 1-0 lead two batters in — on a single by Josh Smith and double down the right field line by Corey Seager — and sent five more batters to the plate in the inning.
But on Morgan’s 32nd pitch, with the bases loaded, Jake Cronenworth laid out to catch a line drive by Jonah Heim and end Mogan’s turn as the “opener†with the Rangers still leading just 1-0.
The Padres also left the bases loaded in the bottom of the first, but they didn’t score against Jack Leiter. After a lead-off single by Tatis and Luis Arraez’s single and Gavin Sheets’ walk with two outs, Xander Bogaerts hit a long fly ball that Rangers center field Evan Carter caught about five feet in front of the wall and a projected 386 feet from home plate.
Morgan left a runner on first base with one out for Hart, whose night started with the left-handed batters atop the Rangers’ order.
Hart, who has made six starts for the Padres this season and was recalled from Triple-A Sunday, retired Smith and Seager on six pitches and went on to set down all 11 batters he faced on a total of 43 pitches to get through the fifth inning.
In the meantime, the Padres tied the game in the third inning and took the lead in the fourth.
Tatis walked to lead off the bottom of the third before Jackson Merrill and Manny Machado struck out. But as Machado swung through the 11th pitch of his at-bat, Tatis was on his way to second base, where he slid in safely. That put him in scoring position for the Padres’ best hitter with runners in scoring position, and Arraez came through by grounding a single up the middle to tie the game 1-1.
Bogaerts began the bottom of the fourth with a single before Cronenworth flied out to right field and Bogaerts was eliminated on a fielder’s choice grounder by Trenton Brooks.
But MartÃn Maldonado got his first hit in 12 at-bats, a single lined to center field that moved Brooks to second, and Tatis followed with a double lined to the corner in left field that easily scored Brooks and sent Maldonado barreling around the bases. He was waved home by third base coach Tim Leiper and was called safe before the call was overturned on replay review, ending the inning.
Maldonado drove in the Padres third run his next time up, with a two-out single in the sixth inning. His grounder through the right side scored Bogaerts, who had flared a one-out single down the left field line and moved to second on Cronenworth’s walk.
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