SAN DIEGO — Twenty-seven days after summer supposedly ended, it returned to Petco Park with unusual force. In the latest home game on the calendar in stadium history, the temperature at first pitch was 92 degrees. A scheduled appearance by the U.S. Navy Leap Frogs was canceled due to the presence of Santa Ana winds. A cloudless sky posed a glaring challenge in each of the first two innings, and the top of the second saw the Phillies bloop and sun-ball their way around the bases. The Padres, already behind in the National League Championship Series, found themselves facing both a one-game hole and a four-run deficit. Another Philadelphia ace was on the mound.
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“That wasn’t a great feeling, to be honest with you,” Brandon Drury said later.
Then came a reminder of how quickly the climate can shift this time of year. Drury and Josh Bell, two of San Diego’s coldest hitters this postseason, opened the bottom of the second with back-to-back homers in the span of three pitches from Aaron Nola. Three innings later, amid the Padres’ second five-run rally in three games, Drury put them ahead for good. Bell followed by supplying a key insurance run.
In an 8-5 win that featured contributions from all corners of the roster, the two midseason acquisitions co-starred on offense. Like an unseasonable heat wave, they made an unmistakable impact. And with the series tied and heading to Philadelphia for the next three games, they might have stumbled upon something for a team that appears to be clicking at exactly the right time.
“It feels like magic,” Bell said early Wednesday evening.
For so long, it had not.
The Padres significantly and ostensibly upgraded their offense on Aug. 2, landing Bell and Juan Soto in the same blockbuster trade, adding Drury in a separate deal hours later. The next morning, Soto wished luck to opposing pitchers who would have to face an overhauled lineup. That afternoon at Petco Park, moments after Soto scored on a hit-by-pitch, Drury crushed the first pitch he saw for a grand slam. Bell jogged home from second base. The Padres went on to rout the Rockies. It felt like a previously mediocre offense was primed for liftoff.
Over the next couple of months, that did not come to pass. Soto endured the worst slump of his career. Bell fell into a similar rut. Drury hit some big home runs but sustained a concussion and suffered from his own inconsistency. Soon, the postseason arrived. While Soto, 23, had already shone on that stage, and the Padres had acquired him for multiple pennant runs, Bell and Drury faced a different kind of scrutiny.
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Both men are 30 years old. Both are known for logging atypical hours in the batting cage. And both will be free agents in a matter of weeks. Contributing to a winning environment, for them, would carry additional weight. Even the slightest struggles would be magnified.
“The last couple of months of the season weren’t, you know, rainbows and butterflies for us,” Bell said. “We definitely had to grind, but I think it was a learning experience.”
He was talking about an entire team, but the statement could have been focused on two players in particular. Bell recorded a .587 OPS in 53 regular-season games after his trade from Washington. Drury, a rental from Cincinnati, started strong after his own relocation, then finished with a .724 OPS. And their production had further dipped in the postseason.
Entering Wednesday, Bell was hitting .130 with one home run in six playoff games. Drury was stuck on one hit — a single — through four appearances. While the bottom of the order had buoyed the Padres, neither Bell nor Drury had emerged as the middle-of-the-order presence the Padres envisioned. On Tuesday, in the team’s one-hit loss to Philadelphia, Bell came up as the winning run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. He struck out on four pitches.
On Wednesday, facing a virtual must-win, manager Bob Melvin batted Drury and Bell fifth and sixth, respectively. With a thin, two-catcher bench, it might not have felt like Melvin had much choice; Wil Myers, in seven games, had also failed to hit much of anything this month. Melvin opted for the combination of Drury at first base and Bell at designated hitter.
This time, it worked as envisioned. After Padres starter Blake Snell surrendered four unfortunate runs during a flukey, 37-pitch inning, Drury swung at the second pitch he saw, a fastball leaking over the plate. A 348-foot laser just cleared the left-field wall. The home crowd, dispirited by those early Phillies runs, showed signs of life.
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A moment later, the whole building was rocking. Bell, swinging at the first pitch from Nola, had skied a 411-foot blast inside the right-field foul pole. One embattled slugger had fed off the other.
“I was thinking I was going to take a strike after that long half-inning,” Bell said. “And then Brandon put the ball in the seats, and I said, ‘You know what, if he comes fastball right here, I’m going to be ready for it.’”
He was, and soon, so was the rest of the team. Snell recovered to hold the Phillies hitless over three subsequent innings. The Padres, in the bottom of the fifth, surged in a manner reminiscent of the seventh inning Saturday against the Dodgers: they put up a five-spot to seize all of the momentum. And as they did against the Dodgers, they forced three pitchers to throw more than 40 pitches in a single inning.
In the middle of it all, the two hitters who had jump-started the offense delivered again. Drury lined a two-run single for a 6-4 lead. Bell singled into right field to drive in the Padres’ seventh unanswered run.
Together, they would finish with five hits and five RBIs. Before Wednesday, they had tallied only four postseason hits between them.
In the aftermath of the Padres’ latest dramatic win, Drury, who finished 2-for-4, described how he had felt more settled in the batter’s box than in recent games. “I was letting the ball come to me a little bit more, not being so jumpy at it,” he said.
A couple of lockers away, Bell, who matched Manny Machado with a game-high three hits, noted a shared approach. “I think (Drury) thinks similarly to me,” Bell said. “He’s not big into the launch angle. He wants to stay tight to balls and hit low, line-drive homers. He’s not trying to hit the highest, most majestic home runs. So I listen to him talk about hitting, and he kind of reminds me of myself.”
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It was perhaps ironic, then, that Bell’s second-inning home run had soared near the peak of a foul pole: “I think if you have the right thoughts and you think low and hard, that’s when homers come.” It was humorous, he observed, that he had lined out at 115 mph the night before, only to collect an infield single in his final at-bat on Wednesday. “The game’s funny,” Bell said. “You just gotta keep playing it. Happy to be on the right side of the ball this time.”
On Wednesday, both Bell and Drury found themselves on the right side for a change. Both expressed their excitement over their place in a broader group. “Facing good pitchers like this in the postseason, to come back from down four, it says a lot about this team,” Drury said. Both shared their hope for more games like the latest one. “Obviously, we work our tails off, but baseball is a tough game,” Bell said. “For us to have some results here, have some success, it’s definitely more fuel on the fire. … And if we can continue to do that, this team’s going to be right where we want to be.”
“They both feel like they aren’t producing on the level that they’re capable of, and I know they want to be a big part of this postseason,” Joe Musgrove said. “So yeah, it’s nice to see them both get theirs today.”
On Friday at clamorous Citizens Bank Park, Musgrove will start Game 3 in what could be the most hostile environment they have yet faced. They will feel good about their chances with the right-hander on the mound; already, he has helped deliver the finishing blow in two playoff series. They can feel good because their bullpen seemingly flexed superior depth to the Phillies’ in Game 2.
They will feel even better if Bell and Drury, the envisioned middle of their order, produce another performance like they did on Wednesday.
“I mean, those guys are here for a reason, and they all have track records,” Melvin said. “You look at their numbers over the course of this year, and they’re all good. Those are the guys we’re going to keep running out there.”
(Top photo of Josh Bell: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)
