The Padres needed three batters to build a lead and nine innings to keep it. Fernando Tatis Jr., Jake Cronenworth and Manny Machado opened Sunday's game with consecutive home runs, and San Diego survived a three-run Yankees eighth for a 4-3 win at Petco Park.
Tatis drove Gerrit Cole's first assignment of the afternoon for his 20th homer. Cronenworth followed with his fifth, then Machado hit No. 26 before Cole recorded an out. The sequence was only the second time in Padres history that three consecutive hitters opened a game with home runs.
The first came on April 13, 1987, when Marvell Wynne, Tony Gwynn and John Kruk did it against San Francisco's Roger Mason. Nearly four decades later, the order changed but the structural advantage did not: three solo swings created a three-run lead without a ball in play that required a fielder. Cole faced a three-run deficit before throwing a pitch with anyone on base.
Michael King protected it for six innings. The right-hander held New York scoreless, allowed no earned runs and struck out three. San Diego's lineup produced no additional run until Luis Campusano hit his seventh homer in the seventh, a solo shot that restored one measure of distance before the bullpen faced the heart of the Yankees' response.
New York scored three times in the eighth. That turned a game defined by the first three plate appearances into a one-run save situation. The Yankees had seven hits to San Diego's six by the end, but the Padres' hits carried greater immediate value: four left the park, and each one accounted for a run.
Mason Miller handled the ninth by striking out all three batters he faced. His 33rd save secured King's 10th win and left Cole with the loss after seven innings and four earned runs. Cole recovered from the historic opening well enough to give New York a path back, but he could not remove the three runs already on the board.
The victory moved San Diego to 75-68 and gave the Padres two wins in the three-game series. New York fell to 81-62. A crowd of 41,061 watched the 2-hour, 26-minute game, a compact afternoon whose score expanded rapidly at the beginning and nearly collapsed near the end. All four Padres runs came on four home runs.
Home-run concentration can obscure the rest of the offensive line. San Diego did not build sustained rallies, and the Yankees placed more hits. On Sunday, the lack of traffic reduced the damage of each swing but did not reduce its certainty. Four solo homers were enough because King delivered six zeroes and Miller delivered three final strikes.
The Padres stayed home to open a series against Washington on Monday. Sunday's formula is too rare to schedule: the franchise waited 39 years between games beginning with three homers. The repeatable pieces sit elsewhere, in King's clean innings and Miller's refusal to let the eighth-inning surge carry forward. The spectacular start supplied the margin; the pitching staff made sure one run of it survived.