Padres: Chris Woodward will be haunted by grand slams

For the third consecutive day, the Padres hit a grand slam, including Manny Machado’s walkoff against the Rangers on Wednesday.

Two nights after Rangers manager Chris Woodward took exception to Fernando Tatis Jr.‘s grand slam on a 3-0 count, Manny Machado played hero for the Padres, hitting a walkoff grand slam to deep left field in the bottom of the tenth inning. Machado has struggled to get it going in year two with the San Diego, hitting .213 entering Wednesday night’s game.

With the slam, the 27-year-old raised his average to .222 with six bombs and 17 RBI. He’s now 4-for-9 in the last two games, so perhaps he’s starting to show signs of snapping out of this difficult stretch.

“I have to give them credit,” Woodward said, via MLB.com. “They fought Montero pretty hard right there. Monte was making some pretty tough pitches. Tatis had some really good foul balls, the whole at-bat with Machado, the same thing. They kind of wore him down. Credit for Montero. He challenged him, and Machado got him.”

But the Padres offense has generally relied on the long ball this year, with Jurickson Profar and Tatis hitting solo shots leading up to Wednesday’s theatrics. The team got a bounce-back start from Chris Paddack, who has struggled in the recent goings, but his fastball looked like the pitch we’ve become accustomed to seeing.

Paddack allowed a solo blast to Rougned Odor on a curveball that caught too much of the strike zone. Give credit to Odor, though. He made a nice adjustment to sit back on the pitch and drive it out.

The Rangers tied the game in the top of the ninth off the bat of Joey Gallo, who parked a Matt Strahm fastball deep into the right field seats. Gallo has hit lefties better than righties in his career, so you just had the sense that he was going to have a say in the matter.

Gaining ground

Machado’s blast helped both leapfrog the Diamondbacks in the NL West standings while pulling within 4.0 games of the Dodgers, who saw their seven-game winning streak come to an end last night.

The Padres will go for the clean sweep of the two and two series with Dinelson Lamet on the mound.