SAN DIEGO — There was virtually no question Blake Snell was not going to finish a no-hitter Wednesday night.
He was too good.
He became the fourth San Diego Padres pitcher this season to throw at least six hitless innings, but his pitches had piled up in large part because he was on his way to tying a career high with 13 strikeouts.
Moreover, the Padres are also trying for another bit of history, and a one-run lead was too thin a margin to play with so someone could throw the franchise’s second no-hitter ever and second in two seasons.
So Albert Pujols’ two-out single through a hole on the right side created by the defense being in a shift in the seventh inning was not all that kept Snell from joining Joe Musgrove in Padres annals.
All that hit did was make the game more tense, as did the single by Juan Yepez that followed before Snell’s 117th pitch of the night, a 97.9 mph fastball, blew past Paul Dejong’s swing for the inning’s final out.
That kept the Padres clinging to a 1-0 lead, which Robert Suarez and Josh Hader finished off as the Padres won their fifth consecutive game and earned a series victory over the team they could face in the first round of the postseason.
Snell’s performance extended the scoreless streak by Padres starting pitchers to 27 2/3 innings, the franchise’s longest since a 29-inning stretch in 1994. The franchise record is 33 1/3 innings, set in 1984.
The game’s lone run came in the second inning.
With one out, Josh Bell grounded a ball to Cardinals second baseman Tommy Edman, the La Jolla Country Day High alumnus who won the NL Gold Glove at his position last season. Edman lost the ball as he attempted to transfer it to his bare hand and was unable to even attempt a throw to get Bell.
Ha-Seong Kim followed with a single that moved Bell to third. And after Bell was thrown out at home trying to score on Wil Myers’ grounder to DeJong at shortstop, Austin Nola lined a single to center field that scored Kim.
Even with win, the Padres were unable to gain ground in the National League wild card race Wednesday.
Earlier results — the Milwaukee Brewers winning for the first time since Saturday and the Philadelphia Phillies winning for the first time in a week — assured that.
The Padres did remain four games ahead of the Brewers and 11/2 games up on the Phillies, as the three teams vie for the two available NL playoff spots.
At this point, however, each victory does get the Padres closer to a postseason berth, one that would be their first since 2006 in a full 162-game season. Their magic number to clinch a playoff berth is now nine, meaning any combination of their victories and Brewers’ losses adding up to nine gets them in. Both teams have 13 games remaining.
Aside from the result, the Padres got another sort of win Wednesday — that of late-season Snell continuing to be the one pitching for them as they move closer to being able to utilize postseason Snell.
As unpredictable as any pitcher in the first few months of most seasons, Snell becomes all but a sure thing beginning in July (or sometimes August).
His final seven starts of 2021 saw him post a 1.75 ERA and strike out 65 batters in 43 2/3 innings. Within that run last year was an Aug. 31 game at Arizona in which Snell was removed after seven hitless innings having thrown 107 pitches. That was because he had thrown a career-high 122 pitches six days earlier.
He entered Wednesday’s game with a 2.70 ERA in his previous 11 starts, during which he struck out 80 batters in 60 innings. With his second straight seven-inning outing, Snell’s ERA dropped to a season-low 3.62 as he improved to 8-9 in 22 starts.
Over his career, which includes his winning the 2018 American League Cy Young award while with Tampa Bay, Snell has a 4.05 ERA before the All-Star break and a 2.79 ERA afterward.
In 35 postseason innings, he has a 2.83 ERA. That includes his allowing the Dodgers three runs in 10 innings in the 2020 World Series.
Snell, who has become flustered by circumstances beyond his control in the past, was unflappable early Wednesday.
He got squeezed by umpire Brennan Miller a couple times in the second inning, the first time helping Nolan Arenado to a leadoff walk.
The second time Miller called a clear strike ball came during Pujols’ at-bat, for which many in the crowd stood and many others held their phones aloft. The Cardinals’ designated hitter has 698 career home runs, two shy of joining Barry Bonds (762), Hank Aaron (755) and Babe Ruth (714) as the only players in major league history to hit 700.
To end that at-bat, Snell blew a 98.6 mph past Pujols’ swing. It was the fastest pitch of Snell’s career. After getting Yepez on a fly ball to center field, Snell struck out DeJong with a 98.3 mph fastball, the second-fastest he has thrown this season.
Snell struck out the side in the third and two more batters in the fourth. He also walked a batter in that inning and was at 65 pitches.
