Giants hit Musgrove hard, swat 4 total homers in a 7-6 win against the Padres

AP Sports Writer

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Matt Chapman, Jerar Encarnacion and Luis Matos homered off Joe Musgrove in the six-run fourth inning and the San Francisco Giants held on to beat the San Diego Padres 7-6 on a hot, wild afternoon Sunday to take two of three games.

Curt Casili also connected for the Giants, who had a winning record (4-3) in San Diego for the first time since 2021 and took a 6-4 lead in the season series with three games to go in San Francisco.

The Padres, who have lost three of four, lead the race for the top NL wild card.

The Giants led 6-0 and 7-1 before some shoddy Giants defense and a bullpen meltdown let the Padres close to 7-6. They scored three runs in the seventh, one on a wild pitch by Tyler Rogers and two on an error by shortstop Tyler Fitzgerald, who collided with second baseman Marco Luciano and dropped Jurickson Profar’s popup that would have been the third out.

Xander Bogaerts then hit a two-run homer in the eighth.

Fitzgerald and Luciano exchanged words in the dugout before third base coach Matt Williams stepped between them.

“It’s bad communication,” manager Bob Melvin said. “It doesn’t matter whose fault it was. It’s unacceptable. It’s bad baseball. Our defense has to get better.”

Melvin said that as shortstop, Fitzgerald “kind of has priority, but maybe went a little too far.”

Both players said it was miscommunication.

“I called it. He didn’t hear it me because obviously it was loud here,” Luciano said through an interpreter. “I did not hear him calling.”

Said Fitzgerald: “It wasn’t my ball. It’s my mistake. Hopefully going forward we’ll just scream as loud as we can.”

Fitzgerald said the two young players “just don’t have that connection right now in the middle where we’re communication on the same page. … I’m not blaming it on him, but I’m trying to get across the point that we have to be louder because if I don’t hear anything I’m going to run over there and try to make the play.”

Erik Miller (4-5) got the win and Ryan Walker got a five-out save, his seventh.

Musgrove (5-5) was cruising after retiring the first 10 batters, including six strikeouts, before the next seven Giants batters had hits, with six of them scoring.

It started falling apart when Heliot Ramos’ fly ball dropped in just to the left of right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr. for a sun ball double. Tatis, who won the 2023 NL Gold Glove and Platinum Glove awards in his first season in right, wasn’t wearing sunglasses on the 90-degree (32 Celcius), bright afternoon and tried to shield his eyes with his arm. Chapman followed with a two-run homer to center, his 23rd.

“It got in the sun at the last second,” Tatis said. “Sunglasses, for me, are worse when you have the sun right on top of you because it just goes, like, way darker. … I’ve played with sunglasses and without sunglasses, and it’s definitely better without them.”

Ramos didn’t run hard out of the box. “He got talked to about that,” Melvin said. “He said he’ll never do that again. He plays hard every single day. A fly ball to Tatis is typically an out. We did discuss here, too, that the sun in right field early in the game in a day game can be tough. He couldn’t be more apologetic.”

Michael Conforto and Tyler Fitzgerald singled ahead of Encarnacion, who homered to left, his third. Matos followed with a homer to left, his fifth, to make it 6-0.

Marco Luciano doubled before Musgrove got Casali to foul out and struck out rookie Grant McCray for the second time in the inning.

McCray was moved up from ninth to leadoff after homering twice and driving in five runs in Saturday night’s 6-3 win. On Sunday, he struck out three straight times, grounded out and then struck out a fourth time.

Musgrove allowed six runs and eight hits in 4 1/3 innings, struck out seven and walked one.

San Diego’s Jackson Merrill, who is pushing Pittsburgh’s Paul Skenes for the NL Rookie of the Year Award, homered off rookie Spencer Biven leading off the fifth. It was Merrill’s 23rd, tying Jedd Gyorko for third on the Padres’ all-time rookies list.

Bivens was pulled with one out in the fourth. He allowed one run and four hits, struck out three and walked three. The 30-year-old made his big league debut on June 16 and was making his second career start.

UP NEXT

Giants: Haven’t named a starter for Tuesday night’s opener of a three-game home series against Milwaukee.

Padres: Haven’t named a starter for Tuesday night’s opener of a two-game series at Seattle.

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