At the end of a wild and wildly satisfying day, Jackson Merrill jacked a first-pitch slider over the wall in right field to give the Padres their second consecutive victory capped by a walk-off home run in the ninth inning.
“I don’t even remember me swinging,” Merrill said. “Just kind of like one of those blackout moments when you do it. Really surreal.”
The 5-4 victory over the Oakland A’s gave the Padres their first sweep of the season.
“We fought really hard,” Merrill said. “We already won the series, but that wasn’t enough for us. We always want that extra step. So it’s really huge to get this first sweep of the year, and we want to keep going.”
The rookie somehow stuck with the breaking pitch from Mason Miller, who throws his fastball 103 mph, sending the Petco Park crowd into a frenzy and his teammates streaming from the dugout for the second time in about 18 hours.
Merrill’s second home run of the game concluded an afternoon that was rife with drama and thick with resilience as the Padres lost a lead in the sixth inning, went down further in the top of the eighth and tied the game in the bottom of the eighth. Then they walked off as winners for a second straight game for the first time since 2020 and did it both times with a homer for the first time since 1986.
“A lot of heroes,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said. “Where do we start?”
Michael King was so good but threw too many pitches to last long. Wandy Peralta was not good at all. Stephen Kolek was excellent. Jeremiah Estrada was sick but still pitched. Robert Suarez pitched for a third consecutive day and got the win for the second straight day.
The Padres finished with six hits — four of them home runs by two players who have not hit a lot of home runs.
Merrill’s first homer, his first in nearly a month, gave the Padres a 2-0 lead in the fifth inning.
Donovan Solano also hit two home runs, something he had not done in the same game since 2019. The first put the Padres up 1-0 in the second inning. The second came with Fernando Tatis Jr. on first base after drawing a walk and tied the game 4-4 in the eighth.
“I think I showed more emotion for that than anything,” King said. “Because down 4-2, you think it’s done, especially with the two horses that they got coming in.”
He spoke of Miller and Lucas Erceg, who threw the 99 mph fastball that Solano sent over the wall in center field.
King had watched his chance to get the win disappear in the sixth inning.
After the right-hander struck out a season-high 12 batters in five innings, the A’s hit five straight singles to start the sixth — the first two against King and the next three against Peralta — to take a 3-2 lead.
It was apparent early that King’s pitches were working — but also that he was working too much.
King had seven strikeouts through three innings, but he had also thrown 58 pitches. He got three more strikeouts in the fourth and did it on just 11 pitches.
Daz Cameron broke a run of four straight strikeouts and seven consecutive outs made via strikeout when he led off the fifth inning with a groundout to shortstop. Cameron also saw 10 pitches, and King was up to 90 pitches (and 12 strikeouts) by the time he got out of the fifth.
King’s fourth pitch of the sixth inning was hit on a soft line to right field by JJ Bleday, and Miguel Andujar grounded a 1-2 changeup down the third-base line, where it was fielded by Solano, who had no play to make but tried in vain to get a force at second base.
King was at 98 pitches, and that was the end of his day.
With two of the three upcoming batters being left-handed, Shildt went to the left-handed Peralta. His first pitch was grounded through the left side by Tyler Soderstrom to score Bleday from second, and a line drive by Shea Langeliers drove in Andujar from second to tie the game.
A well-placed bunt single to the left side by Seth Brown got under Peralta’s glove and rolled to an unmanned spot between shortstop and third base, and Soderstom raced around third and went home with the go-ahead run.
Kolek, a rookie with a 5.76 ERA who has generally been used in low-leverage situations, came in with the bases loaded after a walk by Cameron. He struck out the bottom two batters in the A’s order and escaped when José Azocar made a sliding catch on Abraham Toro’s flare near the left-field line.
“I said right there, ‘That’s gonna help us win this baseball game,’” Shildt recalled of a comment he made to game strategy coach Brian Esposito at the time.
“I definitely knew that was a big critical moment,” Kolek said. “You could feel the energy in the stadium just flip. That was awesome. So there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that after that point that we had a chance.”
Yuki Matsui, pitching a second consecutive day, worked a scoreless seventh before the A’s scored in the eighth against Estrada, who missed Tuesday’s game with what was described as severe flu-like symptoms. He said before the game he was still “weak” but available to pitch.
“He was sick, but he showed up today and posted,” Shildt said. “And I appreciate the fact he took care of himself yesterday. Medical group did a great job with him. And he showed up.”
The Padres were without relievers Adrián Morejón and Enyel De Los Santos, who both pitched the previous two days.
Suarez had pitched the previous two days, as well, but he threw just eight pitches while getting four outs Tuesday after throwing 15 in an inning on Monday.
He threw 19 more Wednesday, coming in after Solano’s blast tied the game and allowing only a one-out single.
After Ha-Seong Kim grounded out to start the bottom of the ninth against Miller, Merrill stepped in to face the 6-foot-5 right-hander.
One pitch later, the kid who turned 21 on April 19 became the youngest MLB player since at least 1969 to hit two home runs in a game with one of those being a walk-off and the youngest Padres player to ever hit a walk-off homer.
And after failing to win the final game of a series in which they had a chance to sweep, the Padres finished off the team with the fourth-worst record (26-44) in the major leagues and completed a 5-2 homestand.
“We should be taking care of these teams, and we did,” Merrill said. “Obviously, the Diamondbacks, we wish we won the series. But we come out here with three of these wins, it’s a good successful homestand.”
