The benches cleared. Everth Cabrera adopted the pose of a man ready for a mixed martial arts fight. The bullpens needlessly ran in and stood around.
It was the most fight the Arizona Diamondbacks showed all weekend.
The Padres took care of business on Sunday afternoon, sweeping aside lowly Arizona with a 6-3 result in front of 25,363 at Petco Park. A crazy benches clearing incident in the 6th inning was the only interruption of an otherwise solid Padres victory.
After tripling home the go-ahead run in the bottom of the 6th, Everth Cabrera was picked off third base by Arizona catcher Miguel Montero. Mark Reynolds’ diving tag resulted in the two players becoming entangled by the bag, and in the estimation of third base umpire Dana DeMuth, Cabrera kicked Reynolds in the…err…upper thigh.
Reynolds pushed Cabrera off of him, and then the benches emptied. Cabrera was ejected, to the surprise of San Diego manager Bud Black.
“I just saw a couple of players tangled up, an emotional game, players playing hard,” said Black.
Cabrera (through interpreter Rick Renteria) said it was a simple matter of two players coming together in a baseball play.
“I came in hard with my feet, and Reynolds came in hard on top of me. I was just trying to get out of the entanglement that developed.”
Short of the rhubarb, which gave both benches and bullpens an excuse to windsprint and shake hands but little else, this was another routine win for the amazing 2010 Padres.
As is routine, the Padres got a totally unlikely contribution (Chris Denorfia: 4-for-4, 2 HR) from an offensive irregular. As is routine, San Diego made the most of their opportunities and cashed in every opponents’ mistake. As is routine, the bullpen cleaned up for Kevin Correia and sealed another victory.
“We have a lot of different guys who are coming to come through, and someone’s going to come up clutch,” said Correia, “but you never know who it’s going to be. We’re good at coming up with that run somehow when we need it.”
As the Padres seek ways to improve their team at the July 31st non-waiver trade deadline, some players are fighting to not be replaced on the 25-man roster. Three such players all rose up to have big games on Sunday.
Denorfia, fighting to keep his roster spot with Will Venable soon due to return from the DL, had his first career two-homer game and second career four-hit game. Tony Gwynn reached base all four plate appearances and stole two bases.
“We put in a lot of hard work and we’re starting to see good results,” said Denorfia.
And while Kevin Correia’s uneven outing met the barest minimum qualification for a quality start (6 IP, 3 ER), the San Diego starter tied a career high with nine strikeouts and evened his record at 6-6.
Correia spotted the Diamondbacks a 2-0 lead two batters into the game. Chris Young led off with a single and Kelly Johnson followed with his third homer off Correia in 2010, a two-run shot to right field.
The Padres answered back on Denorfia’s first homer of the game, a high fly ball that carried all the way over the 401 foot sign in left-center field, cutting the lead to 2-1 in the 2nd.
“Fortunately for me, (Jackson) throws pretty hard, so he provided most of the power,” Denorfia demurred.
Classic Padres baseball ensued over the next two frames. While Correia worked around three hits to pitch scoreless baseball in the 3rd and 4th, San Diego found ways to manufacture offense.
Jerry Hairston Jr. led off the bottom of the third with a swinging bunt single to third base, then advanced to second on a hit & run groundball by Yorvit Torrealba. Two slow rollers to the left side had added up improbably to a runner on second base, and when Adrian Gonzalez delivered the first clean hit of the frame, a single to left, Hairston was home with the game-tying run.
In the fourth, Arizona starter Edwin Jackson (6-8) loaded the bases with one out, then struck out Correia. He jumped ahead of Hairston Jr. 0-2 in the count, then spiked a curveball all the way to the backstop for a wild pitch, giving San Diego a 3-2 lead.
Justin Upton erased that lead in the 5th with a lazer shot over the center field wall for his 15th homer of the season, knotting the game at 3 after five innings.
Then came the action-packed sixth. After Correia worked out of a two-on, two-out jam by striking out Jackson, Denorfia led off the bottom of the inning with his third hit of the game, a single to right. Everth Cabrera followed with a triple just to the left of the Petco porch, putting San Diego ahead for good 4-3.
After the pickoff, dust-up, and return to order, the Padres padded the lead with a pair of runs in the eighth, including Denorfia’s second homer and a Mark Reynolds comical throwing error, channeling the ghost of Steve Sax for a wing down the first-base line.
Heath Bell scuffled with two outs in the 9th, allowing three straight baserunners including Upton’s RBI double, but came back to retire Montero on a slow grounder for his 26th save.
The Padres’ fifth sweep of the season came at the best possible time, taking full advantage of their divisional opponents’ struggles with tougher competition. LA and San Francisco both lost on Sunday, giving San Diego a full four-game lead in the NL West.
Arizona suffered their ninth sweep of the season.
NOTES: San Diego’s 14-hit attack gave them double digit hits for the seventh time in nine games…the Padres are hitting .324 in their last nine games and average seven runs per game over the same span…San Diego now hits the road for a six-game road trip in Atlanta and Pittsburgh.
Craig Elsten -
Chris Ello -
Chainsaw -
