Three walks gave Perdomo room to break the game open

Two outs were already on the board in the sixth inning when San Diego’s Kyle Hart put Arizona’s offense in position to make a routine inning very expensive. Lars Nootbaar walked. Ketel Marte walked. Gabriel Moreno walked. Three free passes loaded the bases, and Geraldo Perdomo came to the plate with the Diamondbacks already leading 7-2.

Perdomo’s double scored all three runners, turning that advantage into a 10-2 cushion. Arizona went on to defeat the Padres 11-4 at Petco Park on Friday night, and that sequence explained the game more clearly than the highlight package will. The Diamondbacks did not merely hit the ball over the fence.

They kept putting runners on base, then found the hit that could move all of them home.

Arizona won the scoring contest while losing the hit count. The Diamondbacks had eight hits, two fewer than San Diego, yet scored seven more runs. They drew eight walks and were hit by two pitches.

The Padres drew two walks and had no hit batsmen. Arizona generated 20 total bases from its hits, but those hits came with plenty of traffic already waiting ahead of them.

Perdomo had been the central figure long before the sixth. In the first inning, Gabriel Moreno singled and Perdomo followed with a triple that scored Moreno. Perdomo then scored on Corbin Carroll’s sacrifice fly.

He walked in the third, walked again in the fifth, and later delivered the decisive double. His final line was 2-for-3 with a double, a triple, two walks, four RBI and two runs.

Perdomo made those different ways of reaching base work together. Perdomo reached base in four of five plate appearances, and his biggest swing came after three teammates had reached by walk. Arizona’s offense kept creating different kinds of pressure: a runner advancing on a triple, a sacrifice fly, a home run, a single through an inning and, finally, a bases-clearing double.

The three home runs still mattered. Lars Nootbaar opened the scoring with a first-inning homer. Jordan Lawlar followed with a solo shot in the second, extending Arizona’s lead to 4-0 before San Diego answered with two runs in the bottom half. Nolan Arenado then hit a two-run homer in the third after Perdomo’s walk, and Moreno’s fourth-inning RBI single pushed the Diamondbacks ahead 7-2.

Arizona’s early scoring arrived in connected pieces rather than one giant burst. Moreno’s first-inning single set up Perdomo’s triple. Perdomo’s third-inning walk preceded Arenado’s homer. In the fourth, Nootbaar walked, Ketel Marte grounded out to move him to second, and Moreno singled him home. The sixth-inning eruption was the clearest version of the same idea: put runners aboard, then bring them home.

San Diego’s 10 hits deserve a fair place in the account. Fernando Tatis Jr. and Xander Bogaerts each had two hits, and Sung-Mun Song also finished with two, although his eighth-inning single came after Brandon Pfaadt left the game. Tatis doubled in the third and reached third after a groundout, but Pfaadt escaped when Manny Machado and Ty France struck out.

The Padres scored twice in the second and added one run in each of the seventh and eighth innings. They made contact; they simply did not assemble enough of it in one damaging stretch.

Pfaadt made that distinction hold up. He worked 7.2 innings, allowing nine hits and four earned runs while walking two and striking out seven on 106 pitches. San Diego’s contact kept the outing from being spotless, but Pfaadt prevented the Padres from building another multi-run inning after the second. Ryne Nelson recorded one out, and Zac Gallen handled the ninth without allowing another run.

The home runs will remain the easiest images from Arizona’s 11-4 victory. The stronger offensive portrait includes the less glamorous work beforehand: eight walks, two hit batsmen and a lineup that repeatedly placed runners where one good extra-base hit could change the inning. Perdomo supplied that hit in the sixth, and Arizona’s broad attack made sure it counted for three.

Sources

Official game data

Official game box score