Gary Sanchez belts two home runs to propel Padres past Rockies
DENVER — Gary Sánchez homered twice and drove in four runs, Juan Soto went deep for the third time in two days and the San Diego Padres beat the Colorado Rockies 11-1 on Wednesday.
Sánchez had two of his three hits in San Diego’s seven-run ninth inning.
Ha-Seong Kim homered leading off the game and Fernando Tatís Jr. hit a towering three-run homer to help the new-look Padres win for the fifth time in six games.
San Diego traded for five players before the Tuesday deadline to help with a playoff push in the final two months of the season.
“The last week, the last 10 days, we’ve played probably our best baseball,” Tatís said. “We’re going to keep it going.”
Xander Bogaerts had three hits for the Padres, whose scheduled starter Joe Musgrove was scratched due to stiffness in his right shoulder.
Nick Martinez served as the opener and tossed three scoreless innings.
Jurickson Profar led off the bottom of the first with a double for the Rockies and Martinez retired nine straight before leaving.
“All my pitches felt good, all of my stuff felt pretty tight,” Martinez said. “I wasn’t missing too many locations.”
San Diego had three of its new players in uniform Wednesday — Ji Man Choi, Garrett Cooper and Scott Barlow, who relieved Ray Kerr (1-1) in the sixth inning and struck out three in 1²/₃ innings.
Kim made it 1-0 with his fourth leadoff homer and 14th of the year off of Colorado starter Kyle Freeland (4-12). Soto, who had two homers Tuesday night, hit a 449-foot blast into the second deck in right field in the third inning made it 3-0.
“Seems like he was sitting dead red on a fastball,” Freeland said about Soto. “It was well above the zone, up near his chest, but that caliber of player, if he’s sitting on a pitch like that he’s usually able to get to it.”
Sánchez hit solo home runs in the sixth and ninth innings to give him 14 on the season. It was his 17th career multihomer game.
Tatís blew it open with a 444-foot three-run homer in the ninth, his 19th.
“It ended up being a nice day offensively for us,” manager Bob Melvin said. “We won three in a row against Texas, we have a really tough night here the first game and then respond with two big games. Hopefully it’s a trend for us.”
The Rockies got their lone run on Elehuris Montero’s bases-loaded groundout in the fourth inning after Kerr had walked two and hit Brenton Doyle with one out. Kerr settled down to strike out six in 2¹/₃ innings.
“It’s a good arm,” Colorado manager Bud Black said. “He threw enough strikes to get through.”
