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Phillies pound Joe Musgrove early in rout of Padres

Kevin Acee, The San Diego Union-Tribune on

Published in Baseball

SAN DIEGO — Calamity followed the San Diego Padres home.

A day after losing a five-run lead in the eighth inning in Colorado, the Padres went down big early and lost 9-3 to the Philadelphia Phillies on Friday night at Petco Park.

The Phillies battered Joe Musgrove from the start, with Kyle Schwarber leading off the game with a high fly ball that landed on the other side of the right field wall and Bryce Harper, Brandon Marsh and Nick Castellanos hitting no-doubt homers in the third inning.

The four home runs were the most Musgrove had ever allowed in a game.

The Phillies also scored in the first inning on a pair of doubles and preceded one of the third-inning homers with a double. Not until their eighth hit, with one out in the fourth inning, did they have a single.

Where Friday certainly justified some concern about Musgrove’s health — or at least about the lack of consistency from one of the team’s most crucial pieces — it could have been worse in the short term.

The Padres bullpen had to cover 61/3 innings in Thursday’s 10-9 loss to the Colorado Rockies after Randy Vásquez could not make it through the third.

Musgrove, who had turned in quality starts in his previous two starts, was able to get into the fourth on Friday, and Jeremiah Estrada covered 21/3 innings after him before Tom Cosgrove and Stephen Kolek finished the game.

Padres manager Mike Shildt tried to hold off as long as he could. No matter how much the Padres believe they can come back from any deficit, they were facing Aaron Nola, who entered the game having allowed a total of five runs in his previous four starts.

The priority once the Phillies went up 6-0 was surviving the night while burning through as few arms as possible.

The phone did not ring in the bullpen until after the third home run of the third inning.

Musgrove was able to get the next two outs to end the third. But with the right-hander having passed 80 pitches, Estrada began warming up as Musgrove was getting the first out of the fourth inning.

Estrada, recalled from Triple-A on Friday, would enter with two down and a runner on second after Trea Turner singled and stole second on Harper’s strikeout.

Alec Bohm greeted Estrada with an RBI single to left field before Estrada ended the inning with a long fly ball out.

 

The right-hander allowed just a walk while getting the next six outs.

The Phillies went up 9-1 on J.T. Realmuto’s two-run homer off Cosgrove in the seventh. Kolek took over for Cosgrove after the first two batters reached base in the eighth.

Schwarber’s homer and two-out doubles by Bohm and Marsh had started the evening ominously for Musgrove.

He is occasionally more hittable in the first inning before settling into starts. But he never settled in Friday.

Manny Machado, playing third base for the first time since Aug. 31, 2023, helped Musgrove out with one of his signature plays to save a run and end the first inning.

With runners at second and third, Castellanos grounded a ball down the line that Machado backhanded and fired across the diamond on one bounce to first baseman Jake Cronenworth.

That kept the score 2-0.

The bad news was that the Phillies came to San Diego having won eight of their previous 10 games in large part because their starting pitchers have been remarkably good.

In those 10 games, Phillies starters had combined for eight quality starts and a 0.83 ERA.

Nola took seven pitches to get through the first inning and three pitches to get the first two outs of the second before Ha-Seong Kim worked a seven-pitch walk. That was followed by Luis Campusano’s single and a drive to the wall by Graham Pauley that was caught by Castellanos.

After a lead-off single by Jose Azocar and two-out double by Cronenworth in the third inning got the Padres on the board, Nola retired nine consecutive batters.

He would strike out 10 over eight innings. Among the seven hits he allowed was Pauley’s two-run homer, launched 419 feet to straightaway center in the seventh, which provided the final margin.


©2024 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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