Ty France homered twice and Gavin Sheets hit a two-run single during a four-run seventh inning as the San Diego Padres rallied past the Arizona Diamondbacks 6-4 on Saturday in Mexico City. The game, staged far from home and under the usual machinery of professional baseball, ended with Mason Miller pitching a perfect ninth for his 10th save while extending his scoreless streak to 34 2/3 innings dating to last season.
Who Got Run Over
Arizona took the early damage and never fully recovered. Jose Fernandez hit a two-run double in the Arizona second, and No. 9 batter Alek Thomas followed with a two-run homer. That four-run burst came against Padres starter Germán Márquez, who was 3-1 and gave up those four runs in the second before settling down. He lasted six innings, allowing six hits and a walk while striking out two.
The Diamondbacks also lost Zac Gallen in the third after he was hit by a line drive on his pitching shoulder. He was lifted after three shutout innings as a precaution, manager Torey Lovullo said. Brandon Pfaadt took over for Gallen in the fourth, and Arizona’s pitching staff later absorbed the collapse that followed.
The Seventh-Inning Squeeze
San Diego, 18-8, has won 16 of 19 after a 2-5 start, and the comeback turned on the kind of late-inning pressure that leaves the other side scrambling. France got the Padres started with a solo homer in the fifth. Then Pfaadt loaded the bases with nobody out in the seventh on two walks and a single before Sheets trimmed the deficit to 4-3 with a two-run single off Taylor Clarke, who was 1-1.
Freddy Fermin tied it with a sacrifice fly, and Ramón Laureano gave the Padres a 5-4 lead with another sac fly. Arizona committed three errors, two in the seventh inning, and the inning became a mess of missed chances and defensive breakdowns. France homered again in the ninth, adding another blow after the game had already slipped away from Arizona.
The Record and the Machinery
Mason Miller’s perfect ninth sealed the win and extended his scoreless streak to 34 2/3 innings dating to last season, breaking the previous Padres record set by reliever Cla Meredith with 33 2/3 innings in 2006. Miller hasn’t allowed a run since Aug. 5, 2025. It is the eighth-longest shutout streak by a major league reliever since 1961.
That kind of stat line is the polished language of the sport’s hierarchy: the closer gets the clean finish, the bullpen gets the credit, and the rest of the roster gets sorted into winners and losers by the numbers. San Diego’s bullpen and late offense did the work that mattered most, while Arizona’s early lead and defensive errors were swallowed by the final score.
San Diego played in Mexico for the eighth time and first since a regular-season series against San Francisco in 2023. The schedule keeps moving, the teams keep traveling, and the game keeps serving the same structure: a controlled spectacle, a scoreboard, and a winner chosen by the machinery of innings and outs.
Padres right-hander Michael King, 3-1, 2.28 ERA, pitches Sunday against Diamondbacks right-hander Ryne Nelson, 1-2, 6.97.