‘He’s that guy:’ Rookie Jackson Merrill’s heroics again lift Padres to victory
After Jurickson Profar’s game-tying homer, Jackson Merrill’s 19th homer of the season allows Padres to split four-game series with the Mets
Francisco Lindor pounded his glove repeatedly into the ground as Jackson Merrill lay motionless behind second base, his outstretched arms still just out of reach of the bag and his face buried in the dirt.
He wasn’t ruled out until he over-slid the base as the potential game-tying run in the seventh inning, ending the first real sign of life on Sunday against the New York Mets.
Merrill’s face was bright red as he pulled himself up to his knees.
By the time he was squatting in center field as he awaited the delivery of his hat and glove, the moment to be mad had passed.
“Flush it, flush it,” the 21-year-old rookie said. “There’s six outs left. I think someone got out right after me, so that puts me in the eight-hole coming up. There’s two innings left. We like to get on base. If two people get on base, I’m hitting again.
“So flush it.”
He did. Then he atoned for the seventh-inning gaffe in the most unbelievable — and yet increasingly predictable — way: He walked off a 3-2 win with his 19th home run of the season.
Because of course he did.
“He’s that guy,” left fielder Jurickson Profar said. “He has it. He’s that guy. Every time he steps up to the plate like that, everyone in our dugout called it.”
That guy’s second walk-off home run of the season capped the Padres’ 33rd comeback of the season and marked the sixth time he’s hit a game-tying or go-ahead homer in the eighth inning or later, tied with Frank Robinson (1956) for the most for an Age 21 player or younger since 1900.
Merrill had the chance on Sunday because Profar delivered eighth-inning heroics.
Veteran left-hander Jose Quintana quieted the Padres over 6⅓ shutout innings and Jose Butto got bailed out of a dicey seventh on Merrill’s caught-stealing only to have the Padres begin to muster more fight in the eighth on Mason McCoy’s one-out walk.
Six pitches later, a 95 mph sinker stayed waist-high and Profar yanked it out to right on a 106 mph line, sending a sellout crowd of 41, 870 into a frenzy.
Profar took a few steps up the first-base line as the ball cleared the wall and flipped his bat high into the blue sky. He paused the ensuing jog around the bases just short of first base and turned to the home dugout as if to beckon his teammates to join him on yet another wild finish.
Merrill had been in line for just that since that frustrating end to the seventh.
And his celebration after watching his home run off a middle-middle, 2-0 slider from Edwin Diaz sail over the wall in right was equally demonstrative, slamming his bat to the ground, pointing to his friends in the dugout and, later, bringing back a slogan that left him wondering if he was about to be fined.
“Let’s (expletive) go, San Diego!” a mic’d up Merrill yelled to the crowd at the end of his on-field interview.
“This game is so much fun when you play with energy,” Merrill later said in the clubhouse. “That’s the best part. … Any sort of energy transfers throughout the entire team. Every bit of it. Good energy in the dugout, always. You’re not slamming (expletive) all the time. You’re not trying to be mad all the time. Good energy, come back in, you’re ready to go.
“That’s how you can transfer it. It’s contagious.”
It was needed on Sunday, too.
The Padres were on the cusp of losing three of four to a Mets team hoping to catch them in the wild-card standings.
Instead, the four-game split allowed the Padres to hold serve as the NL’s current second wild-card team, 1½ games behind a Diamondbacks team that completed a sweep in Boston to extend its winning streak to six games.
Padres manager Mike Shildt certainly managed like his team needed this win.
He pulled Martín Pérez with the bases loaded in the fourth inning after one run allowed on a J.D. Martinez homer, and Bryan Hoeing struck out Lindor for the first of four punchouts over 1⅓ scoreless innings.
After Jeremiah Estrada struck out two batters in the sixth, Jason Adam allowed his first run as a Padre on Mark Viento’s seventh-inning homer to extend the Mets’ lead to 2-0.
Still, the leverage arms poured out of the bullpen: Tanner Scott struck out two batters in the eighth inning and then Robert Suarez logged a punchout in a scoreless ninth. Suarez earned the win with Merrill’s walk-off homer.
“Given the circumstances of the season, where everything’s at right now, it almost feels like we’re playing postseason baseball right now,” Hoeing said. “Which is awesome.
That’ll prepare us for what we do when we hopefully get to the postseason. … Today almost felt like a must-win type of thing. Going into it we just kind of knew, ‘Hey, once we get to the fourth or fifth inning, we might just go right to the bullpen and ride out the guys who are hot and fresh.’
“That’s exactly what happened.”
