The Padres began another critical game with a bang. Now they must finish what they started

SAN DIEGO — His right arm aloft as he trotted past first base, Jake Cronenworth pointed skyward. There was disbelief in the air.The San Diego Padres second baseman had just slashed a line drive that narrowly cleared the left-field wall and barely stayed fair, securing an unprecedented feat. For the first time in 3,560 career plate appearances, Cronenworth hit an opposite-field home run.“That,” Cronenworth said later, “was exhilarating.”The raucous scene at Petco Park was part of a similarly rare sequence as the Padres staggered New York Yankees starter Gerrit Cole with a series of first-inning blows. Right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr. homered moments before Cronenworth did. Third baseman Manny Machado homered moments later. For the second time in franchise history, the Padres led off a game with three consecutive home runs, replicating what Marvell Wynne, Tony Gwynn and John Kruk combined to achieve on April 13, 1987.

Jake the Rake. pic.twitter.com/XA21eF0OYy

— San Diego Padres (@Padres) September 6, 2026Cole managed to stay upright for six more innings Sunday. But in an eventual 4-3 victory, Padres catcher Luis Campusano supplied his second decisive home run in three games, even as San Diego provided resounding reminders of a past milestone and a present challenge.It was almost four decades ago when the ’87 Padres started emphatically against the San Francisco Giants and finished meekly in a lopsided loss. Now, regardless of this month’s outcome, a team that remains just outside the National League playoff picture is reinforcing a timeless truism: How you finish usually matters more than how you start.“It’s a good combination of both,” Tatis said. “It’s just a long season. It’s a marathon. If you start good, you better hold your body to be sustainable the rest of the year. If not, you figure out how to be good after that.”Both this past weekend and at the start of this season, the Padres acquired valuable breathing room. They won 29 of their first 47 games. After a May 18 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers, they found themselves alone atop the NL West. They thrived thanks to a shutdown bullpen and despite an offense that only seemed to deliver late in games.Then, as regression set in, they lost 35 of their next 56. That was before they rose from the mat. A 21-7 stretch culminated last month with new Padres owner Kwanza Jones declaring that she and her husband, José E. Feliciano, would “win it all.”“We hope sooner rather than later,” Jones added.The couple has quickly learned that their new team is rather streaky. Saturday, the Padres lost for the eighth time in 11 games as the Arizona Diamondbacks nudged ahead in the race for the National League’s final wild-card berth. Robbie Ray, like fellow trade-deadline acquisition Casey Mize before him, submitted a clunker of a start. Slumping again, a big-name offense mustered just three hits.Sunday’s rubber match brought an immediate reversal. Michael King, starting against his former club, retired the side on 10 pitches in the top of the first. In the bottom of the inning, the Padres became the first big-league team to open a game with three consecutive home runs since the Yankees did the same on April 29, 2025.“It was huge,” Machado said. “Obviously, (after) what happened yesterday, to come out here and score again off one of the best pitchers in the game, get the early lead and let Michael do his thing, I think that kind of set the tone for the ballclub for the rest of the game.”Kind of. The Padres failed to score again over the next five innings. The Yankees almost tied the game in the top of the eighth, when star setup man Adrian Morejon committed a throwing error and uncharacteristically let in three runs. It might have been more had Campusano not thrown out a would-be base stealer.That was a half-inning after Campusano, who threw out three base runners and hit a walk-off homer in Friday’s series opener, launched the Padres’ fourth solo shot off Cole.“He had a great series offensively and defensively,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said of Campusano. “His maturation as a catcher keeps getting better and better and better, and the best is yet to come for Campy.”A season after he failed to record a single big-league hit amid sparse opportunity, Campusano is showing he has staying power. The 27-year-old is hitting .285 with seven home runs in 165 at-bats. Two of those home runs were game-winners for a Padres team that cannot afford many more losses.Similarly, Tatis is distancing himself from a forgettable beginning. Like fellow high-paid hitters Machado, Cronenworth, Jackson Merrill and Xander Bogaerts, the right fielder has spent much of this year producing at career-worst levels. Tatis, a three-time All-Star and two-time Silver Slugger, did not homer until May 30. For a while, it looked like he might become the face of a lost season.Since the All-Star break, Tatis has hit .286 with 15 home runs. He has returned to carrying a still-inconsistent lineup. The Padres’ most dangerous hitter is again creating hope they will play past September.“That’s how you bounce back,” Tatis said. “You don’t sit down and just take it for granted or just cry yourself to sleep. You try to figure it out, you trust yourself, you build confidence, and I feel like at the end of the day, this game will reward you sometimes.”With 19 regular-season games left, the Padres (75-68) remain something of a toss-up. The Diamondbacks also won Sunday to stay a half-game ahead of their division rivals. FanGraphs puts Arizona’s playoff odds above 50 percent, and San Diego’s closer to 45 percent. The two teams will end the regular season with a three-game series at Petco Park that could decide who advances to the postseason.That might force the Padres to essentially play an additional postseason series immediately ahead of the actual postseason. It wouldn’t be ideal. But this could become their reality after months of up-and-down play.Over the weekend, the Padres at least preserved their slim margin for error.“Coming in against an AL team that has a very good chance to be the AL champion, I think that we definitely put a little bit more pressure on ourselves to make sure that we’re going to continue to compete,” said King, who pitched six scoreless innings to record his sixth consecutive quality start, a career high. “I knew that coming into the series we were outside looking in, and it’d be nice to separate ourselves and give us a little room to work with.”As October approaches, nothing matters more than how the Padres finish. But the starts still count, too.“With the bullpen that we have and what they’re capable of doing, to get them a lead going to even the fifth or sixth inning, it’s super important for us,” Cronenworth said. “Get an early lead, and I think for us everything calms down because we know who we have coming.”