Padres flip switch midgame to beat Guardians for sixth consecutive victory

CLEVELAND — The Padres’ sixth victory in a row veered rather abruptly midway through.

Xander Bogaerts’ two-run homer in the fourth inning set both starting pitchers on a different course, one that meandered from there toward a 7-5 victory over the Guardians.

Luis Campusano drove in three runs with a pair of doubles that reached the wall in the air, Fernando Tatis Jr. hit his fifth home run in nine games and Bogaerts added a third RBI with a sacrifice fly.

An error by Bogaerts helped the Guardians to a run in the sixth inning, and an error charged to Ty France gave the Guardians two at-bats with the potential tying run at the plate in the eighth.

Rookie Bradgley Rodriguez, working the ninth inning because closer Mason Miller and setup man Adrian Morejón were held out due to their heavy workload, earned his first career save.

But this game’s hinges swung the other way when the Padres turned things around against Gavin Williams and Michael King turned things around against the Guardians.

One of the starting pitchers settled in for his team-leading (by far) 12th quality start of the season, and the other was gone earlier than he had been in all but one start this season.

“The only reason I got a win today was because of the offense,” King said.

He would allow four runs in six innings, the last of the runs being unearned.

Williams was charged with five runs, all of them coming on the final eight batters he faced. The 4 2/3 innings he lasted tied his shortest outing in 25 starts and came after a run of four starts in which he had a 1.42 ERA.

The big right-hander abandoned both of his fastballs almost immediately after throwing them exclusively in a six-pitch walk to Tatis to start the game.

The Padres had two-out rallies extinguished before they produced anything in the first two innings and went down in order in the third.

But Williams’ fall off the cliff began when Bogaerts turned on a hanging sweeper with two outs in the fourth inning to cut the Guardians’ lead to 3-2.

“He’s a really good pitcher,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said. “He was kind of using his off-speed stuff a lot more today, and then Xander with a big hit. We’ve kind of done that here lately. We’ve given up runs, and then we’ve gotten a big homer, which makes us feel like we’re back in the game. And then we’ve played really good baseball after that.”

To that point, it had been a struggle for King.

Nathaniel Lowe led off the bottom of the second by sending a sinker in the heart of the strike zone the other way and over the 19-foot wall in left field to put the Guardians up 1-0.

Brayan Rocchio, the Guardians’ No.9 hitter, also got a sinker in the middle of the zone that he drove to the seats to make it 2-0 one out into the third inning.

Singles by Steven Kwan and Chase DeLauter followed, and a strikeout was followed by Lowe extending the lead to 3-0 by grounding a single through the right side.

After yielding a single to start the bottom of the fourth, he embarked on a run of eight consecutive outs.

“I definitely figured it out, I’d say, in the fourth inning there,” King said. “I feel like I was moving faster and I was able to get better. I had a really bad pregame bullpen and was kind of, like, trying to feel it in the first few innings and kept giving up homers. So I said, I don’t want to feel it anymore. I’m just going to throw it as hard as I can and get beat with aggression. And I think by doing that, it got the body moving a little bit and got it back into the place I wanted to be.”

It was against a sinker Williams threw up and over the inner third that the Padres tied the game, as Tatis sent the first pitch of the fifth inning down the left field line at 116 mph off his bat and just inside the foul pole.

Three batters later, the bases were loaded on singles by Jake Cronenworth and Manny Machado and a walk by France.

Campusano’s one-out double to the base of the wall in right-center field that scored two, made it 5-3 and ended Williams’ night.

A double off the top of the wall by Petey Halpin in the sixth got the Guardians to within a run in the sixth. That followed a single by Angel Genoa on a grounder up the middle that Bogaerts nabbed but threw into the Padres dugout, allowing Genoa to get to second base. When King struck out Patrick Bailey to end the inning, that made the run unearned.

The 21 pitches King threw in the sixth were the most he needed in any inning and he was at just 83 pitches for the game, but he had labored at the end and had been almost all the way through the Guardians lineup three times.

So Stammen went to Yuki Matsui in the seventh, and the left-hander inherited a three-run lead after the Padres added two runs in the top of the seventh.

France began the inning with a double off the left field wall, and after Merrill took a pitch off his foot, Campusano drove in France with a double off the right-field wall. Merrill later scored on Bogaerts’ sacrifice fly.

Jeremiah Estrada gave up a run in the eight that made it 7-5 before Rodriguez overcame a leadoff double in the ninth with a groundout and two strikeouts that ended the game.

“Just very emotional about getting that first save,” Rodriguez said through interpreter Joreg Merlos. “First of many, hopefully, in my major league career.”