Jake Cronenworth homered twice and knocked in a season-high five runs Sunday while Fernando Tatis Jr. also homered as the San Diego Padres defeated the visiting Miami Marlins 7-3 to polish off a three-game sweep.
San Diego (87-69) won its fifth straight game and is 13-1 in its last 14 games. The Padres stayed in a tie with the Chicago Cubs for the first wild-card spot in the National League and remained a game ahead of Philadelphia for the second wild-card position while reducing their magic number for clinching a playoff berth to 2.
Walker Buehler (9-6) worked 6 2/3 innings to earn the win, allowing three hits and three runs with two walks and six strikeouts. Three relievers finished up as San Diego completed a six-game season sweep of Miami.
Sandy Alcantara (13-11) absorbed the loss after permitting eight hits and four runs over six innings. Alcantara, who walked one and whiffed three, is winless in his last eight starts.
Cronenworth initiated scoring in the second. After a two-out single by Xander Bogaerts, Cronenworth picked on a hanging breaking ball and skied it an estimated 335 feet into the seats in right.
Two innings later, Cronenworth was at it again. After Jackson Merrill legged out an infield hit and reached third on a two-base throwing error by second baseman Javier Sanoja, Cronenworth sliced a one-out double to left to make it 3-0, then scored on Samad Taylor’s RBI double down the left field line.
Buehler retired 12 hitters in a row at one point and took a one-hitter to the seventh. But Sanoja slugged the Marlins back into contention when he pounced on a hanging breaking ball and cracked a three-run homer to the seats in left-center, his 10th.
However, San Diego used the long ball to put the game away. Tatis drilled a hanging slider an estimated 406 feet over the wall in center in the seventh for his 25th homer.
Cronenworth added his seventh homer of the year and second of the game in the eighth with Bogaerts aboard. It was Cronenworth’s first multi-homer game of the year.
