SAN FRANCISCO — The Padres played just eight games against National League West opponents over the season’s first two months.
They did not face the Dodgers until June 8, the furthest into a season the two teams met for the first time in 25 years.
That was part of a run of 14 division games in 18 days, including seven against the Dodgers.
The Padres have not seen them again since, and before beginning a series against the Giants here Monday had played just seven intradivision games in nearly two months.
The wait has given way to some exciting late-season matchups.
The Padres were playing the Giants on Tuesday night with a chance to move into a tie for first place in the NL West, if they could win and the Dodgers lost to the Angels in Anaheim.
They shook hands on the field at Oracle Park after beating the Giants 5-1 not knowing whether they would be in first place. Shortly before 10 p.m., there were cheers from various spots around the visitors clubhouse, as the Angels walked off with a 7-6 win over the Dodgers in Anaheim.
The celebration was brief, really more of an ackowledgment that they had seen a result that mattered.
“It’s fun to watch,” Xander Bogaerts had said a few minutes earlier as he sat in front of his locker doing just that. “It’s a fun time of year.”
The Padres have not been atop the division this late in the season since they were a half-game up on the Giants on Sept. 25, 2010. The last time they were even within a game of first place later than June was on the second-to-last day of the 2010 season.
That season ended with the Padres having won 90 games but two games back in the division and a game out of the only wild-card spot.
There are three wild-card spots available now, and the Padres hold the second of those, 3½ games ahead of their nearest pursuer.
Tuesday’s game was the Padres’ 120th of the season, leaving 42 to play. The standings are far from set.
“A lot of games to go,” Merrill said. “Nothing we can control over there. We’re all in the moment here. Come back tomorrow, go for the sweep and keep moving forward. We can’t really think about the future right now.”
Still, it doesn’t get much more immediate in mid-August than the two-week stretch the Padres are in.
Tuesday was the second of 13 consecutive games against only the Giants and Dodgers.
The Padres will finish the series here Wednesday afternoon before heading to Los Angeles. After a day off, they will play three games at Dodger Stadium.
The Giants and Dodgers will visit Petco Park next week, the Giants for four and the Dodgers for another three.
“We’ve been battling our butts off all year to put ourselves in this position,” Jake Cronenworth said. “Now we play them six times in the next 10 days. It’s going to be a great battle.”
The Padres led almost continuously from the start on Tuesday after a wind-aided single helped them extend the first inning and score a run, and they kept making Giants starter Robbie Ray throw extra pitches after that.
“He’s tough, man,” Bogaerts said. “He’s a good pitcher. He’s having a really good year too. And we didn’t really give any outs away, you know. We competed hard, kept adding on as much as we can.”
Ray (9-6, 2.98) ended up lasting longer than Padres starter Nestor Cortes.
That was because Padres manager Mike Shildt has what is widely considered the major leagues’ deepest and best bullpen, and he is not going to waste it.
With Cortes at just 79 pitches, Shildt went to rookie David Morgan to face Giants cleanup hitter Willy Adames with runners at the corners and two down in the fifth inning.
“With this bullpen, you can’t take chances,” Cortes said. “I think what (Shildt) did there was the right call.”
Morgan struck out Adames on four pitches.
After Ray finished his sixth inning on his 113th pitch, Morgan went back out for the bottom of the sixth.
A single and a walk at the start and another single with one out loaded the bases and ended Morgan’s night.
This time, Jason Adam came in and finished off the inning on four pitches.
Adam also worked a scoreless seventh before Adrian Morejón did the same in the eighth and Robert Suarez followed suit in the ninth.
The Padres did most of their damage against Ray, who got unlucky in the first inning before the game got away from him in the second.
Ray appeared to have ended the first inning without incident when Manny Machado popped a ball just beyond the right side of the infield. But the circularly swirling wind on the San Francisco Bay blew the ball about three feet to the left of charging right fielder Tyler Fitzgerald, who had called off the two infielders giving chase, and the ball fell to the grass.
Bogaerts hit the next pitch off the base of the left field wall to move Machado to third base, and the Padres scored without another pitch being thrown when Ray’s spike got stuck in the dirt as he went into his windup and the balk moved both runners up.
The Giants reset the game at 1-1 on a double and two singles, though only Casey Schmitt’s drive off the wall with one out was straightforward.
The first single was a line drive by Rafael Devers that was right to Machado at third base. However, Machado flinched as the ball approached and then zipped past his glove. And after Cortes struck out Adames, Wilmer Flores sent a dribbler up the third base line that stopped on the edge of the grass as Machado and Cortes watched it and Devers ran home.
The game was tied only as long as it took Ramón Laureano to single on the ninth pitch he saw from Ray and Jose Iglesias to hit his first home run of the season on the first pitch Ray threw him.
A leadoff double by Laureano led to the Padres extending their lead to 4-1 in the fourth inning when Jake Cronenworth singled up the middle.
Jackson Merrill’s home run in the eighth concluded the scoring.
Their 13th victory in 16 games was also the 10th time in 15 games the Padres scored at least five runs. That was something they had done just four times in their previous 20 games.
“This is team is going in the right direction,” Iglesias said. “We stay healthy, we should be fine.
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