Padres shut out Rockies, improve to 9-0 at home

Kevin Acee, The San Diego Union-Tribune on Apr 12, 2025

Published in Baseball

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SAN DIEGO — Kyle Hart retired the first 10 batters he faced Saturday night, which was two more batters than he faced in his previous start.

The Padres got a season-low three hits, but two of them were solo home runs.

They beat the Colorado Rockies 2-0.

Just another victory at Petco Park.

The Padres are perfect through nine games at home, and their 12-3 record is the best in the major leagues and tied with the 1998 club for the best 15-game start in franchise history.

Saturday was their second time shutting out the Rockies in two nights and fifth shutout of the season, all of them achieved at Petco Park.

Homers by Fernando Tatis Jr., on the game’s seventh pitch, and Jason Heyward, in the fifth inning, made six innings from Hart and an inning apiece from Jeremiah Estrada, Jason Adam and Robert Suarez stand up.

The big-picture significance of the night was that Hart bounced back from a horrid start last Sunday at Wrigley Field when he got just two outs, walked four batters and was charged with five runs.

Facing a much-less-disciplined group of batters and pitching far more precisely than he had against the Cubs, Hart allowed one hit and didn’t walk any.

It was Kyle Farmer, who had all three Rockies hits on Friday against Nick Pivetta, who broke up Hart’s string of outs.

Farmer followed lead-off batter Ezequiel Tovar, who hit a fly ball that was caught at the wall on the 10th pitch of his at-bat for the first out of the fourth inning.

But after Farmer’s end-of-the-bat flare fell between left fielder Jason Heyward and center fielder Brandon Lockridge with one out in the fourth inning, the inning was over two pitches later on lineouts to right field by Ryan McMahon and Kris Bryant.

Hart set down the final six batters he faced and was through six innings on 73 pitches, 49 (67%) of them strikes. He had thrown just 18 strikes among his 39 total pitches (46%) in Chicago.

The Padres were introduced to a pitcher they might be seeing for a while.

Actually, Tatis introduced himself to 23-year-old Chase Dollander, a hard-throwing right-hander who made his major league debut six days earlier.

Dollander blew a 97.4 mph fastball just off the plate past Tatis’ swing to run the count full in his first-ever matchup with a Padres batter. The next pitch was 97.6 mph, but it was down the middle, and Tatis sent it 424 feet over the wall in left-center field and directly into the glove of reliever Logan Gillaspie standing in the bullpen.

The ninth overall pick in the 2023 draft settled in after that. Lockridge’s lead-off walk in the third inning gave the Padres their only baserunner until Heyward launched a 97 mph fastball left in the heart of the zone a projected 410 feet and just shy of the second level of seats beyond right field.

Dollander, who allowed the Athletics four runs on five hits in Colorado on April 6, was pulled with two outs and two on in the sixth inning Saturday.

Jimmy Herget came in to face Jose Iglesias, with Luis Arraez at third base and Gavin Sheets at first. Herget did not have to get Iglesias out to end the inning.

The Padres tried a play that worked for them earlier in the season but failed pretty bluntly on Saturday, as Sheets took off for second base and stopped when catcher Jacob Stallings threw down. Arraez did not take off immediately from third but did eventually go, so he was fairly easily caught in a rundown after Farmer, the second baseman, returned Stallings’ throw.

The Rockies finished with four hits, including Zac Veen’s single off Suarez’s glove leading off the ninth and Farmer’s one-out line drive up the middle that gave the Rockies runners at first and second with one out in the ninth. Suarez struck out McMahon, and Bryant lined out Tatis, whom made a lunging catch on the track to preserve Suarez’s major league-leading seventh save on seven chances.

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