PITTSBURGH — The San Diego Padres continued on Friday to act like a team that knows what to do when it is on the field with an inferior opponent.
Their series opener against the Pittsburgh Pirates at PNC Park looked a lot like the three games they just swept in Cincinnati. It took a bit to build but ended with the Padres running away from the Pirates for a 7-3 victory.
The Padres have won four straight games, their third streak that long this season.
Perhaps most satisfyingly, as they have been striving for balance, there were contributions from all over and continued signs a couple players might be heating up as May approaches.
New guy Trayce Thompson got the Padres going with a walk and later began the process of putting the Pirates away with a two-run single. Ha-seong Kim hit a two-run homer and scored another run after a single. Jake Cronenworth hit his second homer in six games and drove in another run with a single.
Kim was batting .194 before going 3-for-4 on Wednesday. Cronenworth has raised his batting average 53 points to .213 and his OPS 164 points to .701 over the past six games.
The Padres trailed 2-0 after the first inning, tied the game in the third, took a 4-2 lead in the fifth, went up 6-3 in the sixth and pushed their lead to 7-3 in the seventh.
Yu Darvish turned in his fourth quality start in five games this season, allowing three runs on eight hits and a walk over six innings.
He threw a season-high 98 pitches, and it was something of a struggle for him even before he took a 105.6 mph line drive off his bicep in the bottom of the fifth inning.
That ball, off the bat of Ke’Bryan Hayes, ricocheted off Darvish and out to third base, where Manny Machado picked it up and fired to first base for the second out of the inning.
The play froze Bryan Reynolds, who reached on a fielder’s choice and stole second, but he scored on Daniel Vogelbach’s single.
That made it 4-3.
The Pirates, whose record fell to 8-12, would get no closer.
The entire night offensively followed a somewhat familiar path for the Padres’ offense — a slow start before piling up runs.
Pirates starter Zach Thompson, who had allowed a run in the first inning of each of his first three starts and a total of 17 runs in 10 innings, got through two innings without allowing a baserunner.
In the third, Thompson, the Triple-A home run leader who was called up Thursday to replace the injured Wil Myers, drew a one-out walk in which he saw eight pitches. Kim followed by sending a 2-1 fastball on a line 425 feet to left field to tie the game 2-2.
The Padres loaded the bases with one out in the fifth when Matt Beaty led off with a walk and Kim hit a one-out single off Thompson. Trent Grisham followed by getting hit by a pitch in the arm from reliever Aaron Fletcher. Cronenworth drove in Beaty with a single, and Kim scored on Machado’s sacrifice fly.
After the Pirates had pulled to 4-3 in the fifth, Eric Hosmer walked and Austin Nola doubled to start the sixth. Thompson lined a full-count slider from Heath Hembree into left field to make it 6-3.
Cronenworth’s 405-foot shot to right-center off left-hander Sam Howard concluded the scoring.
Taylor Rogers entered in relief of Craig Stammen with one out and two on in the ninth and retired the next two batters to earn the save for the third game in a row.
