Entering Saturday's game at Petco Park, the only MLB team that Blake Snell had not started against was the one he won a Cy Young Award with. The veteran lefty showed Tampa Bay what they're missing in a fabulous outing.
Snell struck out 12 Rays, getting all nine guys in the starting lineup at least once, in a 2-0 Padres win over the team with the best record in the game. The outing was the latest in a series of stellar Snell starts. Over his last five outings, he's allowed just two runs over 30.0 innings, dropping his season ERA from 5.40 to 3.48. It was also the second straight start where he's punched out a dozen, and we're not talking about easy outs here.
Tampa Bay owns MLB's best scoring offense and the previous outing came at Coors Field, the world's most hitter-friendly ballpark outside Mexico City.
Hats off to the San Diego bullpen, as well. Steve Wilson and Nick Martinez threw a scoreless inning to get the ball to Josh Hader, who punched out a pair in the 9th to earn his 17th save of the season.
Offensively the Padres got both of their runs in the 5th inning and did it in a way we haven't seen all that often this year: they manufactured them. Ha-Seong Kim and Trent Grisham led off with singles against Rays righty Zach Eflin (a former Padres draft pick). They moved up on a sacrifice bunt from Fernando Tatis Jr., the first of his big league career. Juan Soto lined a sacrifice fly to centerfield to score Kim and Grisham came home on an infield single by Manny Machado.
That's the kind of offensive execution that can help a team win a lot of ballgames. It's nice to see the Padres have it in their toolbox. The Padres can win the series on Sunday afternoon behind Joe Musgrove, who takes the ball against Tampa Bay righty Yonny Chirinos.
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