SAN DIEGO — Manny Machado believes the way he and Eric Hosmer are preparing and playing is setting a tone.
“We’re pushing everybody in this clubhouse to be the best that we possibly can,” Machado said. “If we bring it every single day, everybody else is gonna have to come in and bring it.”
Eventually, he reasons, the rest of the Padres will hit.
“It will click for us,” he said. “And when it does, it’s gonna be dangerous.”
Friday night, Machado and Hosmer got the Padres started, and then it clicked for a couple guys that had not done much this season, and then Machado took care of business again.
What to make of that is an open-ended question.
But it worked Friday, as Yu Darvish went seven innings and Robert Suarez and Steven Wilson closed out a 3-2 victory over the Marlins at Petco Park.
It was the first major league save for Wilson, who pitched the ninth because closer Taylor Rogers had pitched the previous two days and six of the previous 10 days.
Bob Melvin mixed up his batting order, looking for anything to get the offense going.
Marlins pitcher Sandy Alcantara’s two-out walk to Machado in the first inning was followed by Hosmer, the new cleanup hitter, smacking a double to the gap in right-center field that brought Machado around to score.
Friday night was the 18th game one or both of them drove in at least one run. They had through Thursday accounted for 36 percent of the Padres’ hits and scored 30 percent of their runs.
Thursday night, Machado’s two solo homers were all the scoring the Padres did in a 2-1 victory.
Trent Grisham, who came into the game batting .159, led off the fifth inning with a triple. He scored on a double by Matt Beaty, who entered batting .086. After two outs, Machado lined a single to left field to score Beaty.
The Marlins, who had lost five straight leading up to Friday, got to within a run on Jesus Aguilar’s two-run homer in the sixth.
Darvish allowed five hits, going seven innings for the first time this season.
