By ASSOCIATED PRESS
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Yu Darvish had his best outing since being sidelined for more than three months, and rookie Jackson Merrill and Jurickson Profar homered as the San Diego Padres beat the Houston Astros, 3-1, on Monday night, Sept. 16.
The Padres took a 2 1/2-game lead over Arizona for the top NL wild card and stayed 3 1/2 games behind the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West.
Houston’s lead in the AL West dropped to four games over idle Seattle.
Padres leadoff hitter Luis Arraez struck out for the first time since Aug. 10, snapping a streak of 141 plate appearances without whiffing. He went down swinging against rookie Spencer Arrighetti to end the second inning.
It tied Padres Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn for the fifth-longest streak in the last 40 seasons. Gwynn, who played his entire career with the Padres, had the longest such streak, 170 plate appearances in 1995.
Arraez, the DH, later left the game with a knee injury. He was shaken up on a slide as he was tagged out at home plate in the fifth. Arraez initially stayed in the game and doubled in the seventh, but walked off the field gingerly after being replaced by pinch-runner Tyler Wade.
“He jammed his knee in the plate,” manager Mike Shildt said. “Reports are stable, sore. You could tell after he legged out the double.”
“What a gamer,” said Shildt, who added that Arraez told him before his at-bat in the seventh, “`I can hit.’”
Darvish (6-3) allowed three hits in six scoreless innings, his longest outing in three starts since a layoff of more than three months while he was on the injured list and restricted list. He struck out three and walked two.
“He was great. He was really fantastic,” Shildt said. “Very efficient, controlled counts, fastball had a life to it. I thought he was vintage Yu. He was tremendous. Got us through six and we could have rode with him more, but he was at that number. He’d done his part.”
Darvish threw 79 pitches.
The tall right-hander said through an interpreter that he felt “pretty good. The two-seamer was working really well and I was able to rely on that heavily. The off-speed pitches were pretty effective as well.”
As far as starting a series with playoff implications, Darvish said: “You try to kind of not put too much pressure on yourself, but obviously, you’re going against a really good team so you’re super focused and trying to execute pitches.”
Darvish said he’s getting closer to having no pitch restrictions.
“I would think so, as far as the number of pitches go,” he said.
Robert Suarez pitched a perfect ninth for his 33rd save.
Profar’s leadoff shot in the eighth, his 23rd homer, was his fourth straight hit. He fell a triple shy of the cycle.
Merrill continued to make his case for NL Rookie of the Year when he drove Arrighetti’s first pitch of the fourth an estimated 413 feet to straightaway center field. It was his 24th homer and tied Nate Colbert (1969) for second among Padres rookies. Hunter Renfroe hit 26 in 2017.
Colbert’s franchise record of 163 homers, which had stood since 1974, fell to Manny Macahdo last week.
Machado hit an RBI double in the first.
Jose Altuve doubled leading off the eighth for Houston and scored on Yordan Alvarez’s single.
Arrighetti (7-13) allowed two runs and eight hits in five innings. He struck out three and walked one.
