MEXICO CITY — Up 3-0 in the count, Austin Nola tapped his bat against the plate, noticed an odd sound and, with only seconds to spare, readied for the next pitch. After watching a sinker from Alex Cobb whiz by for a called strike, Nola thumped the knob of his bat against the ground. It was then that he received confirmation.
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“I went up to bat for three pitches with a legit, almost full, down-the-middle crack,” Nola said later. He still had no idea how the fracture had occurred. He and his teammates were simply thankful that it had.
Against the very next pitch, with a new bat in hand, the catcher cranked his first home run of the season through rarefied air at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú. A day after a torrential downpour of offense, the Padres started their scoring there, with a two-run shot in the bottom of the fifth. Four innings later, they secured a sweep of a two-game series with a 6-4 win over the Giants.
Time will tell if a memorable weekend was the start of something grander. The Padres boarded their team buses Sunday night looking forward to familiar comforts and expressing more than a little wistfulness.
“We’re gonna miss playing here,” said Matt Carpenter, who drove in the decisive runs with a bloop double in the eighth. “It was a lot of fun. And going back home to San Diego, we are excited to get back home and play in front of our home crowd, but it felt like one here, too.”
No(la) doubt about this one 🚀 pic.twitter.com/qWFTl57sYZ
— San Diego Padres (@Padres) April 30, 2023
Officially, the 2023 Padres have scored 64 runs across 15 home games. In reality, they have scored just 42 runs across 13 games in Petco Park. They will return there Monday after getting a large boost to their so-called home tally during the first two major-league regular-season games in Mexico City history.
“We all want to stay here,” Nelson Cruz laughed as he stood in the Diablos Rojos’ spacious home clubhouse, preparing to depart. “We should come (back) soon, you know?”
This particular team might never get the chance; international showcases, for obvious logistical reasons, are not frequent events. Yet, in the coming weeks and months, no matter what else occurs in a season of elevated stakes, the Padres can come back to the memories they created here in the Mexican capital. They cannot replicate the altitude or the hitter-friendly artificial turf, but they can chase a repeat of what they felt.
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“I’m looking at this as essentially the series that kickstarts this club,” Carpenter said.
Not everyone fully enjoyed playing in it. On Saturday, Joe Musgrove saw his repertoire of breaking pitches diminished 7,350 feet above sea level. On Sunday, Yu Darvish made his fifth start of the season and served up his first three homers of 2023. Like Musgrove, Darvish experienced the sensation of working without much of a safety net. Unaccustomed to the altitude, he inhaled oxygen between innings.
“I was a bit gassed,” Darvish said through interpreter Shingo Horie. He later added: “As far as the pitching goes, there’s certain pitches that do not move the way you want.”
Darvish, being the uniquely equipped veteran he is, found ways to compensate. He shelved his two-seam fastball and his changeup. He emphasized his hard cutter, his hard slider and his gyro slider — pitches, he noted, “that have lower spin efficiency.” The three home runs he permitted were all solo shots. He struck out nine and completed six innings of four-run ball.
And he did enjoy himself, too.
“I felt some great support from the Mexican fans,” Darvish said. “Even in the bullpen before the game, there were some warm voices. So it was a very supportive atmosphere, I’d say.”
For a 15-14 team, the Padres are currently riding the vibes of a more successful outfit. Sunday, the home dugout at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú erupted when Cruz, 42, legged out his first triple in three years. The Padres wasted his herculean effort, stranding him 90 feet from home, but they later found more reason to celebrate. In the fifth, the club’s least productive hitter made legit, full-on contact with a home run that traveled an estimated 440 feet. The rarefied air, perhaps, may have only supplied a boost of 30 or so feet.
Had to run back the piñata party 🪅 pic.twitter.com/Fvp6JIFo0C
— San Diego Padres (@Padres) April 30, 2023
“It just feels good to help our team,” Nola said. “Especially in an atmosphere like this, you wanted to join in with all the home runs being hit. You get the ball up in the air and it felt like the ball went out.”
Windy conditions and competitive pitching — Cobb did not allow a run in four of five innings — tamped down the output. Fernando Tatis Jr. still came close to hitting a ball out, two at-bats after Nola’s blast, with a ground-rule double. Juan Soto drove him in with a single.
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Three innings later, the Padres awakened again. Soto drew a one-out walk. Xander Bogaerts extended his season-opening on-base streak to 29 games with a single. Jake Cronenworth followed by lining a tying single off Giants closer Camilo Doval, who had been summoned to face him. Carpenter dumped the go-ahead double into shallow center as the wind swirled.
That set the stage for Josh Hader, who threw a 1-2-3 ninth and secured the Padres’ first win of the season in which they trailed after seven innings. All things considered, they pitched well in the series finale. And the bats had shown up again, at least when it counted.
“Overall, great road trip. 6-3,” Cronenworth pointed out. “Series win against Arizona, who was playing really well. Obviously didn’t get the result we wanted in Chicago, but we came here, new atmosphere, and we started crushing.”
Now, the Padres will see how much of it transfers. Monday night, Tatis will play his first game at Petco Park since Sept. 26, 2021. The reception could be akin to what the reemergent star got at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú, only twice as voluminous.
The actual playing conditions? That could be quite a different story, but the Padres are hopeful.
Sometimes all you need is an unexplainable break.
“I mean, hitting’s hitting, pitching’s pitching, even though the elevation did play a factor for sure,” Nola said. “But when you get the barrel on the ball, I think that leaves a margin for error.”
(Photo of Austin Nola celebrating with Matt Carpenter and Trent Grisham: Kirby Lee / USA Today)