CINCINNATICINCINNATI — The Padres’ offense woke up.
“Rest and hits,” manager Mike Shildt said. “We love that.”
After being shut out two straight nights, they came back big in the second game of their series here against the Reds, scoring in three consecutive innings in the middle of the game and closing out a 7-3 victory as rain fell on Great American Ball Park.
Michael King, who allowed the Rockies six runs in five innings in his last start, held the Reds to three runs in 6⅔ innings and then turned over the game to the Padres’ bullpen, which ran its scoreless streak to 14⅓ innings.
The Padres had looked tired and did not deny they were in Tuesday’s loss to the Reds, their third game in 33 hours following a doubleheader Monday in Atlanta.
There was a later bus option and no on-field batting practice Wednesday.
Fernando Tatis Jr. had said Tuesday the Padres would get some good sleep and then “get back in the jungle.”
They did return to being the offense that has shown up most days recently, creating numerous opportunities they eventually took advantage of enough.
“We are a good team,” said Luis Arraez, who had four hits, including a leadoff homer. “We just need to go out there and play this game, and this is a beautiful thing.”
The Padres had 14 hits, eight of them off former Padres pitcher Nick Martinez in his 4 2/3 innings. It was their fifth time in double digits in the past eight games. After starting the game hitless in five at-bats with runners in scoring position, the Padres went 4-for-7 in that situation while scoring five runs between the fifth and sixth innings.
“It’s stringing them together,” Manny Machado said. “Nick was keeping us off-balance a little bit early on there. He got out of a couple of innings, and in (the fifth) inning we were able to put something on the board and get going and hit with runners in scoring position.”
The scoring for both teams began with first-inning homers, with Arraez beginning the game with his first of the season and Jeimer Candelario just clearing the wall in right-center with two outs in the bottom of the first.
King escaped that inning with a strikeout, began the next inning with a walk and then retired 13 consecutive batters on a total of 40 pitches before walking Jacob Hurtubise with one out in the sixth inning.
By that time, he had a six-run cushion.
The Padres took the lead back in the fourth inning and scored multiple runs in the fifth and sixth.
The fourth began with Jurickson Profar’s walk. Profar went to third base on Machado’s second double of the game and scored on a grounder to the right side by David Peralta, the recently signed veteran called up Wednesday to take the roster spot of Xander Bogaerts, who went on the injured list with a fracture in his left shoulder.
Five hits in the fifth inning resulted in three more runs and could have/should have been four.
Luis Campusano and Tyler Wade began the inning with singles. After Arraez flied out, Tatis lined a single to right field that scored Campusano and sent Wade running around second before retreating and running into Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz, who tagged him out.
The blunder did not hurt so much after Profar drove in Tatis with a double and Jake Cronenworth drove in Profar with a single to make it 5-1.
Donovan Solano, pinch-hitting for Peralta, singled to start the sixth inning, and Wade hit a two-out single that rolled up on first baseman Spencer Steer and went into right field, allowing pinch-runner Jose Azocar to score. Wade moved to second when an errant pick-off attempt by reliever Brent Suter got past Steer and Wade scored on Arraez’s third hit of the night, a single.
It took King 31 pitches to navigate a six-batter sixth inning, in which the Reds followed Hurtubise’s walk with a two-out single by Candelario and two-run double by Tyler Stephenson.
He got out of the inning when Wade, who started at shortstop, leaped to catch a line drive by Mike Ford.
With Wandy Peralta warming up in the bullpen, Steer began the bottom of the seventh by lining a double down the line against King.
King struck out Nick Martini and got Jonathan India on a grounder to second base that moved Steer to third base. That came on King’s 92nd-and-last pitch, as Shildt called on the left-handed Peralta to face left-handed batter Will Benson, whom he struck out on three pitches.
Peralta worked the eighth before Robert Suárez jogged in to pitch the ninth as a downpour began. He finished off the game in front of a nearly empty ballpark, as a lightning warning was displayed on the video boards.
A bullpen is often in a precarious position, and that was true Wednesday of the Padres’ crew of relievers, even as they continued their scoreless streak and have allowed one run in their past 19⅔ innings. Every reliever had worked in the previous two days. So having to use just Peralta and Suárez was something for which Shildt expressed appreciation.
“(King) went out there and got two outs in the seventh, which was big with our bullpen,” Shildt said. “And Wandy did a nice job to close that inning out and get that double-play ball to get (out of) the eighth. And, of course, Suárez brought it home and made sure we stayed dry.”
