SAN DIEGO — A fly ball by Fernando Tatis Jr. just beyond the wall in right field. A line drive by Jake Cronenworth off the painted yellow line on the corner of the Western Metal building. A low line drive rocketed off Manny Machado’s bat at 109 mph into the Padres’ bullpen.
Those three home runs — one barely long enough, one barely fair enough, one barely high enough — were hit in succession before the Padres made an out on Sunday.
It was a historic display of power.
It was the first time in 40 seasons the Padres have begun a game with three home runs, and it made Yankees starter Gerrit Cole the first MLB pitcher to ever allow three home runs at the start of a game twice in his career.
“That was really fun, especially the quality of the starter that we were facing today,” Tatis said. “That’s the kind of push that we needed as an offense, and it was definitely a great start.”
Hard to be better.
However, for all that excitement, it was Luis Campusano’s towering blast to the second deck of seats beyond left field leading off the seventh inning that decided a 4-3 victory over the Yankees. And it might have been Campusano’s throw to nab José Caballero trying to steal second in the eighth inning that kept the Padres from having to score more.
“Give a lot of credit to Campy,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said. “Great game.”
Again.
Campusano threw out three would-be base stealers and walked off a 4-3 victory with a two-run homer in the 10th inning of Friday’s series opener.
“Campy’s series in all — four caught stealings, two game-winning homers,” Cronenworth said. “He had an outstanding series.”
Cole was hardly touched outside the four home runs he allowed in seven innings, and the Yankees scored three runs against Adrian Morejón in the eighth inning to make it tense before Mason Miller worked the ninth inning to earn his 33rd save.
Before the Yankees broke through against Morejón, King turned in his sixth consecutive quality start, the last three of which have been scoreless outings, and Bradgley Rodriguez worked a 1-2-3 seventh.
By winning a series against the Yankees for the first time in five tries since 2019, the Padres remained a half-game behind the Diamondbacks in the race for the National League’s final postseason spot.
The game was far more tense than might be imagined in a contest where one team led by at least three runs for essentially all of the first seven innings.
And that was before Morejón surrendered two infield singles, walked a batter and allowed an extra run on a throwing error.
King (10-9, 3.00) allowed successive one-out singles in the second inning, loaded the bases with two outs in the fifth and survived a one-out walk in the sixth thanks in part to Cronenworth diving to spear a line drive just off the ground for the final out.
“Kind of lost a little bit toward the middle-end there,” said King, whose scoreless streak reached 212/3 innings. “… But I was able to get the outs when needed.”
Cole, who had not given up more than three runs in any of his previous 11 starts, fixed whatever the Padres saw in the first inning.
“They put really good swings on the ball,” Cole said. “The curveball squirted out to Tatis. Machado took a great pitch out, incredible swing. I thought Cronenworth took a pretty good 2-1 fastball and put a pretty good swing on it. … Sometimes it is what it is. You gotta separate that from doing your job, which is continue to take it one pitch at a time, leave the mistakes behind you and keep working. So I just got back to work.”
After duplicating something he also did at Minnesota in 2022 in allowing the three homers at the start, Cole (8-8, 3.41) retired 21 of the final 24 batters he faced.
Dustin Harris began the second inning by lining a single to right field that caromed off Jasson Domínguez’s glove and rolled to the wall as Harris got to third base standing up.
But Xander Bogaerts grounded out to shortstop, Ethan Salas struck out and Tatis popped out.
That began a stretch in which Cole set down seven straight and 15 of 16 before Campusano got his barrel on a 2-1 fastball in the heart of the strike zone and sent it a projected 433 feet.
Cole got through the seventh to finish his day having allowed the four home runs and two singles.
It was about as costly as four home runs could be.
Sunday was, in fact, the 1,164th game in which the Padres scored exactly four runs. It was the sixth in which they did so by hitting four homers.
Sunday’s victory was just the fourth in their past 12 games, and it gave them their first series win over the Yankees in the teams’ past five meetings.
“It’s been fun coming here, coming home,” Machado said. “Fans obviously into it. Fun weekend, for sure. Faced good pitching all weekend. To come out today, to face one of the best pitchers in the game, get Michael the early lead to start pitching his game was kinda nice.”