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SAN DIEGO (AP) — Jake Cronenworth hit a tiebreaking, two-run homer and Mike Clevinger was good for six innings because the San Diego Padres beat the Chicago White Sox 5-2 on Saturday to scale back their magic quantity for clinching an NL wild card to 1.
Juan Soto and Manny Machado additionally related for the Padres, who can declare their first playoff spot in a full season since 2006 on Sunday after they ship lefty Blake Snell to the mound for the sequence finale. They bought some assist when Miami beat Milwaukee 4-3. San Diego leads Philadelphia by two video games for the second of three Nationwide League wild playing cards.
“It feels good to get the magic quantity down to 1,” stated Clevinger, who had an important slider. “It is like slightly playoff sport there.”
Bob Melvin, in his first season as Padres supervisor, acknowledged he was scoreboard-watching in the course of the sport. Cronenworth homered proper across the time the Marlins-Brewers sport ended.
“Issues change shortly over the course of a day,” Melvin stated. “It is the wonderful thing about this time of yr is issues can change in a rush. … A number of good issues occurred to offer us slightly bit extra confidence.”
The Padres beat St. Louis in a first-round playoff sequence after the pandemic-shortened 2020 season earlier than being swept within the Division Collection by the eventual World Collection champion Los Angeles Dodgers.
With Clevinger (7-7) and Dylan Stop (14-8) locked in a duel after every allowed a house run within the first inning, the Padres knocked the Chicago right-hander out of the sport earlier than he may get an out within the sixth.
Machado hit a leadoff single and Cronenworth adopted with a homer onto the whiskey deck atop the correct discipline wall, his seventeenth, for a 3-1 lead. Cronenworth raised each arms within the air and yelled, “Let’s go!”
“We’re at that time within the season the place each run issues,” Cronenworth stated. “A house run like that’s fairly massive. We wish to be excited in these alternatives.”
Melvin was comfortable to see the ability surge, particularly Cronenworth’s homer.
“When you may have a extremely good starter like that you simply’re attempting to chase, one swing of the bat will be big in a detailed sport, and that is what it was,” Melvin stated. “Croney’s homer felt like greater than a two-run homer on the time, primarily based on the truth that each pitchers have been pitching that nicely.”
Stop, within the dialogue for the AL Cy Younger Award, walked Brandon Drury and Josh Bell and was pulled for Joe Kelly. Austin Nola singled to herald Drury, and Bell was thrown out attempting to achieve third.
Clevinger held the White Sox to 1 run and three hits whereas hanging out three and strolling none. After permitting Elvis Andrus’ leadoff homer, Clevinger retired 16 straight batters till giving up consecutive singles with one out within the sixth. He then retired the subsequent two batters to complete his night time.
Josh Hader pitched the ninth for his thirty fifth save.
Stop gave up 4 runs and 5 hits, struck out 5 and walked 4.
Andrus drove Clevinger’s second pitch to heart discipline for his second profession leadoff homer. It was his fifteenth homer this yr. Andrus completed with three hits, together with an RBI single within the eighth.
Soto tied it with a moonshot to heart with one out within the backside of the primary, his twenty seventh. Machado homered off the facade of the second deck in left off Jake Diekman with one out within the seventh, his thirty second.
UP NEXT
White Sox RHP Lance Lynn ((7-7, 4.16 ERA) and Snell (8-9, 3.47) are scheduled to start out the sequence finale Sunday.
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