Before Friday's game against Tampa Bay at Petco Park, Padres manager Mike Shildt shared an interesting stat that the club's media department did a great job digging up. He mentioned that, prior to Wednesday's 6-0 loss to the Tigers in Detroit, the Padres had gone 86 straight games without being shut out.
The second-longest active streak in baseball belonged to the Red Sox at 34 games, which is still impressive but nowhere near the dominance San Diego had displayed.
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WATCH HEREUnfortunately, they'll have to wait another day to start another non-shutout stretch. The Padres dropped a 1-0 decision to the Rays, just their second home loss of the season.
It's not often a starting pitcher doesn't allow a single earned run and takes a loss but it happened to Michael King. The San Diego right-hander was incredible on a night where his usually nasty sinker was doing especially silly things. King struck out nine Rays, five of them looking (four where the sinker was the called 3rd strike) in 5.0 innings of work.
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SIGN UP In the 3rd inning Taylor Walls hit a routine grounder to shortstop. Xander Bogaerts charged and fielded it cleanly, but instead of setting his feet and making a strong throw he tried to wing it while still running. The ball nose-dived and 1st baseman Gavin Sheets couldn't pick it out, a completely avoidable error.
A pair of singles sent Walls to 3rd and loaded the bases for the Rays with nobody out. King did a tremendous job of only allowing the one run, on a sacrifice fly by Yandy Diaz. King struck out Jonathan Aranda and got Junior Caminero to pop out to 2nd base to end the inning.
As for the offense, it never really showed up but in the bottom of the 5th, Tirso Ornelas had a fantastic moment. The Tijuana native who grew up driving up to Padres games with his uncle has been in the San Diego system since signing as a 17-year-old in 2017. He finally got to make his big league debut during the club's recent road trip and in his first game as a pro at Petco Park he got his first Major League hit, lining a single right up the middle off Tampa Bay starter Shane Baz. He got to keep the baseball.
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He didn't get to stay on the bases very long. Elias Diaz grounded into a double play, the first of three rally stopping twin-killings the Padres would hit into.
Fernando Tatis Jr. continued his MVP-level play. Tati had two of the Padres five hits but was left on base on both occasions when Bogaerts struck out to end the inning.
The Padres try to avoid their first three-game losing streak of the year on Saturday night with Dylan Cease on the mound against Ryan Pepiot.
