PHOENIX — Pitching on the one-year anniversary of his no-hitter, Joe Musgrove was merely just another really good Padres starter on Saturday night.
The big right-hander quickly allowed the first hit by one of the team’s starting pitchers this season. Then he allowed the first run.
When he departed after six innings, he had surrendered two runs on five hits and continued a string of excellence begun by Yu Darvish and Sean Manaea.
Three relievers and some manufactured runs in the eighth inning finished off a 5-2 victory over the Diamondbacks at Chase Field.
Steven Wilson got the win in his major league debut, as his scoreless inning was followed by the Padres scoring twice off Ian Kennedy in the top of the eighth.
Manny Machado led off the inning with a single, stole second and went to third on a wild pitch with one out with Luke Voit up. Voit walked, bringing up Eric Hosmer.
Hosmer sent a 107.5 mph grounder across the turf to second baseman Ketel Marte’s left. The ball ricocheted off Marte’s glove and into right field as Machado scored and Voit kept running to third. The extra base taken by the relatively lumbering Voit allowed him to run home and make it 4-2 on Austin Nola’s fly ball.
Pierce Johnson worked a scoreless eighth, and after the first big-league singles by C.J. Abrams and Jose Azocar helped the Padres to a run in the ninth, Taylor Rogers protected the three-run lead for the second straight night for his second save.
Musgrove allowed a run on two hits in the first inning and then retired 13 of the next 15 Arizona batters. He threw six pitches in the fourth inning and after seven pitches in the fifth was at 62 for the game.
Musgrove’s sixth inning lasted just 12 pitches, but it included a two-out home run by David Peralta that tied the game 2-2.
The Padres are the only team in the major leagues with three pitchers to have gone at least six innings. The Phillies have had both their starters go six. No other team has had more than one starter last that long, and just six other teams have had one such performance.
With that as the lead-in — “Tough acts to follow,” he said Friday night — Musgrove surrendered a flared single to left by Marte, the second batter in the bottom of the first inning.
That brought to an end a record 13 hitless innings by Padres starting pitchers at the beginning of the season.
It was the first time the Diamondbacks got a hit before the seventh inning in the series. The double by David Peralta that followed gave them their first run before the ninth inning.
The streak wasn’t going to last forever. It was shocking it went on as long as it did.
What Darvish and Manaea did was such a rarity it took the prolific baseball statisticians some extra time to make sure of the last time it has been done. After assuring on Friday night it was the first time in the expansion era (since 1961) two starters for the same team had gone at least six hitless innings in the first two games of a season, Elias Sports Bureau said Saturday it was the first time since 1901 it had happened in two starts of any length to begin a season.
The Padres were facing former teammate Zach Davies, a slight right-hander with soft pitches who elicits soft contact when he is on.
He was for most of his four innings.
Nola’s second-inning single was the only hit and the only ball any of the first eight Padres batters put in play with an exit velocity harder than 78 mph.
The top of the order was ready its second time seeing Davies’ sinker and change-up. And Davies was suddenly not so pinpoint.
Trent Grisham walked with one out before Matt Beaty hit a low liner that went in and out of first baseman Christian Walker’s glove. Walker threw to second to force Grisham while Beaty reached first.
Beaty raced around to score on Machado’s double grounded at 105.9 mph to the corner in left field, and Jake Cronenworth followed with an RBI single lined to center at 105.7 mph.
Voit’s first hit as a Padre was a 107.6 mph single lined over the shortstop before Eric Hosmer grounded out to end the inning.
