SAN DIEGO — Nearly 40 years ago, the Padres became the first team in Major League history to begin a game by hitting three consecutive home runs.
In the four decades since Marvell Wynne, Tony Gwynn and John Kruk all took San Francisco’s Roger Mason deep on April 13, 1987, only 10 other pitchers have started a game by surrendering three straight homers.
And now one of them has done it twice: Yankees ace Gerrit Cole, of all people.
“Man, it was impressive,” said Tatis. “Just overjoyed seeing my teammates and myself putting good barrels out there against one of the best, if not the best, starter in the game.”
Cole, meanwhile, found himself on the wrong side of baseball history. He’d also surrendered three homers to begin his outing on June 9, 2022, in Minnesota. The Yankees came back to win that day — with then-New York reliever Michael King picking up a hold with a scoreless eighth inning.
King ensured that wouldn’t happen again on Sunday, pitching six scoreless frames against his former club. Cole, meanwhile, wouldn’t allow another run until Luis Campusano’s solo homer in the seventh. That blast would prove decisive, after the Yankees rallied for three runs in the top of the eighth.
“They put really good swings on the ball,” Cole said. “Sometimes it is what it is. You’ve got to separate that from doing your job, which is to continue to take it one pitch at a time and leave the mistakes behind you. You keep working.”
Of the three first-inning home runs, Cole was ready to call only one of them a mistake pitch — a hanging curve that Tatis swatted to right field to open the scoring.
“The curveball kind of squirted out to Tatis,” Cole said. “I thought Machado took a great pitch out; unbelievable swing. And I thought Cronenworth took a pretty good 2-1 fastball and put a good swing on it.”
It was Tatis’ 20th home run of the season — a feat he has now achieved in all six of his full seasons in the big leagues. But he gets bonus points this time around, because he didn’t hit his first until May 30.
“That’s how you bounce back,” said Tatis, who has fully rediscovered his power stroke. “You don’t sit down and take it for granted and just cry yourself to sleep. You try to figure it out. You trust yourself.”
Still, the homer the Padres celebrated most was Cronenworth’s. By far. Cronenworth has spent seven seasons in the big leagues and had hit 84 previous home runs. Not one of those home runs had gone to the opposite field.
Until Sunday. He smacked Cole’s fastball down the left-field line and kept it just fair off the facing of the Western Metal Building. The Padres’ dugout went nuts. So did Cronenworth, as he rounded the bases.
“Never thought it was going to happen,” Cronenworth said.
“Only took him seven years,” Tatis joked.
After the game, there was some talk about whether Cronenworth would try to get the baseball. To which he replied: “I think it’s going straight to the Hall of Fame.”
The Padres were still celebrating Cronenworth’s opposite-field blast when Cole painted a 97 mph fastball on the outer half to Machado. It was, as Cole said, a very good pitch. But when potential future Hall of Famers square off, they tend to do Hall of Fame things.
And that’s what Machado did, launching a missile a Statcast-projected 416 feet to straightaway center field.
“I think the most impressive was: We hit an oppo homer to right field. We hit one [oppo] to left. And then we hit one to center,” Machado said. “Against, again, one of the best pitchers in the game, you don’t really see that.”
Quite a statement for a team looking to make a push in the National League Wild Card race. The Padres (75-68) kept pace with the Diamondbacks (76-68) with Sunday’s victory, a half-game back for the final playoff spot in the NL.
It was their first win in which they’d scored four runs on four solo homers since the last time they went back-to-back-to-back at any point in a game — against the Astros on Sept. 18, 2024. (Machado and Tatis were a part of that as well, alongside Donovan Solano.)
“That was really fun,” Tatis said. “Especially against the quality of starter that we were facing today. That was the kind of push we needed as an offense.”