Machado homers at Fenway

Manny Machado did not just hit a home run at Fenway Park on Sunday. He dragged a game back from the edge, then put his name on the moment that finished the series. San Diego beat Boston 8-6 on April 5, taking two of three at Fenway after falling in the opener, and Machado’s three-run shot in the fifth inning was the swing that turned a four-run hole into a Padres lead. Jackson Merrill added the go-ahead homer in the eighth, but Machado’s blast was the hinge. It was his first homer of the season, and it came after the Padres had spent the first week of April searching for traction. (espn.ph) That search was obvious when the series began. Boston took Friday’s home opener, 5-2, behind a strong start from Sonny Gray and home runs from Willson Contreras and Marcelo Mayer. The next day, San Diego answered with a 3-2 win in cold weather, stealing the game in the ninth on Ramón Laureano’s bloop RBI single off Aroldis Chapman. By Sunday, the rubber game had the shape of an early test. The Padres were trying to prove that Saturday was not a one-off. The Red Sox were trying to stop a skid that had already started to bend their season. (mlb.com) For a while, Boston looked in control. The Red Sox scored four runs in the third inning on Sunday and chased Padres starter Walker Buehler before the fourth was over. Fenway had the easy feel of a game that was tilting one way. Then came the strange play that cracked it open. On a pickoff attempt, Machado kicked the ball away near third base, sending runners into scoring position and helping San Diego set up a three-run fourth. It was the kind of sequence that looks fluky in isolation and decisive in context, because Boston never really got its grip back after that. (espn.ph) The next inning, Machado made the weirdness irrelevant by doing the cleanest thing a hitter can do. He hit a three-run homer and flipped the score to 6-4. That mattered beyond the box score. Machado had opened the season 0-for-10 before stringing together three straight hits, and the homer landed inside a larger Padres rally that finally looked like their lineup waking up. Xander Bogaerts, back at Fenway as a visitor, collected three hits of his own. Merrill had three hits too. The Padres did not steal this game. They hit their way through it. (espn.ph) Boston still had a chance to erase the damage. Masataka Yoshida tied the game in the seventh with a two-run double, which should have reset everything. Instead, it only cleared space for Merrill’s answer in the eighth, a solo homer that put San Diego back in front for good. Jeremiah Estrada handled a perfect eighth. Mason Miller closed the ninth for his fourth save. The Red Sox left the field with their seventh loss in eight games. The Padres left for Pittsburgh at 4-5, still under.500 but carrying something more useful than a neat record in the season’s first full week: a comeback win, a road series in Boston, and Machado’s first homer disappearing over the wall at Fenway. (espn.ph)