Jurickson Profar celebrates with teammates in the Padres dugout after his sacrifice bunt in Thursday’s eighth inning. They will host the Diamondbacks, Mariners and Braves in the final stretch before the All-Star break.
Much of that has to do with games like yesterday, in which he drove in his team-leading 56th run and his team-leading ninth game-deciding run. “I knew coming into this year it was going to be a year that I really tried to learn as much as I can about starting pitching … and almost prove to myself that I can go that many innings and be a full-time workhorse,” he said. “But there are a lot of things that I need to do right to be able to go that distance — go 180 innings, go 200 innings.”
He was not so much perturbed by his finish yesterday as he was by the middle portion of the game. After getting through the first two innings in 26 pitches, he was at 81 pitches after five innings.“I didn’t ‘lose it’ in those middle innings,” he said. “But instead of having the 10-, 12- 15-pitch innings, there 20-pitch innings. I will still wouldn’t give up a base runner, but it’d be a 20-pitch inning because I had an eighth-pitch at-bat and a nine-pitch at-bat.
A day after taking 16 pitches to retire all five batters he faced Wednesday, Morejón worked a scoreless inning yesterday. Kim, who hit a fly ball to left field that Wyatt Langford caught at the top of the wall in the second inning and lined out to Smith at third base at 103.8 mph in the fourth inning, drove in the Padres’ third run with a sacrifice fly in the seventh inning.
After Tyler Wade and Luis Arraez began the inning with singles, Profar took it upon himself to move them both up by pushing a ball down the third base line.