Germán Márquez rebounds as Padres blank Pirates, improve to .500

Kevin Acee, The San Diego Union-Tribune on Apr 6, 2026

Published in Baseball

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PITTSBURGH — Germán Márquez turned toward left field to make sure the fly ball was caught and, with another runner stranded at third base at the end of an inning, pumped his right fist in front of his body.

Then he turned and walked toward the dugout, pounding his bare hand against his glove.

His night was finished. He had done his job.

The Padres have a .500 record after their third consecutive victory, and they might have a No.5 starter after Márquez rebounded from his awful season debut to get a win for the first time in 13 starts.

The veteran right-hander escaped trouble in three of his five innings, and the Padres scored in three consecutive innings en route to a 5-0 victory over the Pirates Monday night at PNC Park.

The night before they will face Paul Skenes, the Padres (5-5) took a few innings to size up hard-throwing rookie Bubba Chandler Monday before chasing him with a run in the fourth inning and two more in the fifth.

Manny Machado’s walk, a single by Xander Bogaerts and Nick Castellanos’ double gave the Padres a 1-0 lead in the fourth inning. A leadoff walk by Jake Cronenworth and one-out walk by Tatis led to the pair of runs in the fifth, though left fielder Bryan Reynolds running a long way to miss Jackson Merrill’s fly ball, which bounced over the wall for a ground rule double helped.

Two-out doubles by Freddy Fermin and Cronenworth against Yohan Ramirez made it 4-0 in the sixth. Fermin’s one-out single and a dobule by Ramón Laureano in the eighth produced the final run.

The Pirates (6-4) had won five straight leading up to Monday but looked a lot like the team the Padres have now beaten 12 of the 13 times they have met over the past three seasons, including seven in a row here. In addition to Reynolds’ gaffe, the Pirates cost themselves a prime scoring opportunity with a mixup on the bases in the second inning.

Márquez was exponentially sharper than he had been Tuesday while allowing the San Francisco Giants four runs in three innings. And he may have eliminated whatever tells with which he was alerting batters to what type of pitch was coming in that first start.

But he was up against it early and often.

A walk and a single gave the Pirates runners at the corners with one out in the second inning, and it appeared they would have bases loaded when Spencer Horwitz grounded a single off the glove of first baseman Gavin Sheets.

But after initially stopping Ryan O’Hearn, third base coach Tony Beasley waved him home when the ball trickled into right field. O’Hearn did not go until he saw that the trailing runner, Nick Gonzales, had made it almost all the way to third. With that, O’Hearn took off for home, where he was thrown out by Fernando Tatis Jr.

A pair of two-out singles gave the Pirates runners at the corners again in the third inning before Márquez struck out O’Hearn.

The peril he faced in the fifth was not all his making, as Pirates leadoff hitter Oneil Cruz ended up on third base with one out after a single and a throw into center field by Fermin on a steal attempt.

With Ron Marinaccio warming up, Márquez got Brandon Lowe to pop up and Reynolds hit the fly ball to left field that had the Márquez celebrating.

Marinaccio worked the next two innings and David Morgan the final two to secure Márquez’s first win since June 18, ending a stretch of 12 starts in which he was 0-9.

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