Caleb Durbin's walk-off solo home run lifts Brewers over Padres, 4-3

Kevin Acee, The San Diego Union-Tribune on Jun 7, 2025

Published in Baseball

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MILWAUKEE — The Padres are winning close games in ways that they believe will steel them for later success.

They are losing a number of the same kinds of games as well.

And after those games, it is always a relief pitcher sitting dazed in the clubhouse, trying to process what happened.

Following Saturday’s 4-3 loss to the Brewers on Caleb Durbin’s walk-off home run in the ninth inning, it was rookie David Morgan staring straight ahead with red eyes pondering the one pitch he threw in his fifth career appearance.

“You have to go into that situation and throw strikes, and you’ve got to get ahead,” Morgan said. “… Maybe wrong spot. I think the pitch is OK there. My fastball is a good pitch, get ahead with it. He was waiting on it, ambushed me. That’s part of the game.”

Morgan’s 98-mph fastball just above the strike zone landed in the Brewers bullpen beyond left field and ended an eventful final few innings.

The Padres trudged off the grass at American Family Field having let a game slip away before Morgan became a part of it but also having fought back to force the ending to come as it did.

An error in the seventh inning helped the Brewers to a 1-1 tie. An unfortunate series of events in the eighth inning led to the Brewers going up 3-1.

Then the Padres hustled up two runs in the ninth inning, both driven in by a two-out double by Luis Arraez, who is playing through a balky knee.

“Guys fought their tails off,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said. “We have some guys that are just giving us every single fiber they’ve got. And I’ve got so much respect for it. … Our guys are grinding. I couldn’t be more proud of the guys that were in the fight tonight.”

Saturday was the Padres’ fifth game in six days decided by one run and the 14th game in their past 16 to be decided by no more than two runs.

They have won nine of those close games in that stretch.

They took the one-run lead they assumed in the fourth inning into the bottom of the seventh on Saturday before the Brewers scored three runs in the next two innings. Two of those runs were unearned.

The Padres’ got their lead on a single by Jackson Merrill, a 10-pitch walk by Jose Iglesias and an RBI single by Elias Díaz.

And starting pitcher Stephen Kolek departed in line for the win after a good chunk of another game without allowing a run.

Kolek yielded three hits, got his ninth and 10 double-play grounders, and departed with a runner on first base and two down in the sixth inning. Adrián Morejón stranded that runner, making Saturday the fourth time in seven starts Kolek has gone at least 5 1/2 scoreless innings.

A throwing error by Iglesias helped put a runner in position to score on a sacrifice fly against Jeremiah Estrada in the seventh.

In the eighth, Jason Adam was mostly victimized by an unfortunate series of events.

He walked a batter with one out before a dribbled single toward third base and catcher interference loaded the bases. A sacrifice fly brought in the go-ahead run and a flared 66-mph single the other way gave the Brewers a 3-1 lead.

“I gotta make better pitches than that, honestly,” Adam said. “I think I got ahead of guys fine, I just wasn’t able to put them away, get a whiff there. Sure, there were some balls that didn’t fall the right way, but … you take the good luck with the bad luck, and I got to make better pitches. … It sucks because the guys, the way they battled there, they deserve to win the ball game right there. I think if I do my job, they put up those two runs, game is over, we’re in here celebrating. It sucks, because those guys battled against some really good pitching today. They deserved to get a win for that.”

Díaz, whose single drove in Merrill in the fourth inning, began the Padres’ comeback in the top of the ninth with a single before being erased at second on pinch-hitter Tyler Wade’s fielder’s choice grounder.

Xander Bogaerts followed with a walk before he and Wade executed a double steal. Arraez then sliced a 101-mph fastball from Trevor Megill the other way and just inside the left-field line for a double to tie the game.

Manny Machado’s groundout ended the ninth. Had he been able to get his third hit of the game and score Arraez, it would have been closer Robert Suarez working the bottom of the inning. But Suarez’s workload has been great enough that he was not going to work in a tie game.

“He was ready for a lead,” Shildt said. “Bottom of the order (was up). Different part of the order, maybe Robert. … Tough spot for Morgan, but he’s throwing the ball extremely well. He’s a strike thrower. Durbin put a swing on it. Simple as that.”