WASHINGTON — The Padres got some bad news and then beat a bad team.
About 15 minutes after being informed star shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. had been suspended 80 games for a failed performance enhancing drug test, Padres players took the field at Nationals Park and went about battering the club with the worst record in the major leagues.
Friday’s 10-5 victory over the Nationals ended up being a footnote on a day that was supposed to be notable for the fact Juan Soto and Josh Bell were returning to play the team that traded them 10 days earlier.
Soto, a star on Washington’s 2019 World Series championship team, received an extended standing ovation before his first at-bat and doffed his helmet in appreciation. Bell also got an ovation before his first at-bat.
The Padres took a 1-0 lead in the fourth inning on Brandon Drury’s double and Ha-Seong Kim’s RBI single.
The fifth inning began with Jurickson Profar’s walk and successive doubles by Soto and Manny Machado that put the Padres up 3-0. After a Bell groundout moved Machado to third, Drury walked before Jake Cronenworth hit a grounder to shortstop Luis Garcia that should have yielded the inning’s second out. Garcia, however, rushed his throw, releasing the ball before he stepped on second base and still not getting Cronenworth at first. Machado scored on the play.
After Kim struck out, Trent Grisham bashed a three-run homer. Singles by Austin Nola, Profar and Soto made it 8-0.
It was the third inning in two games in which the Padres scored at least six runs and the second time in franchise history they scored at least seven runs in an inning in back-to-back games.
Drury’s two-run homer in the eighth inning, his third in nine games with the Padres, completed the scoring.
Padres starting pitcher Mike Clevinger allowed just three hits. But he walked four batters, threw 94 pitches and lasted just five innings. The Nationals scored a run off Clevinger in the fifth inning and one off Nabil Crismatt in the sixth. They added three charged to Tayler Scott in the ninth, who left with one out and the bases loaded before Nick Martinez got the final two outs.
