Padres starting pitchers turned a corner by running through the Rockies as if they weren’t there.
It was Michael King’s turn to shut out Major League Baseball’s worst team on Sunday. King didn’t even need any other pitchers to do it.
The right-hander retired all but three of the 29 Rockies he faced in the first complete game of his career, and a 6-0 victory over the Rockies was the Padres’ third consecutive shutout.
Their second laugher in three games against the Rockies extended the Padres’ best start at home to 10-0 and improved their MLB-best record to 13-3. The only other time a Padres team began a season 13-3 was the 1998 club, which kept playing all the way to that year’s World Series.
The Padres kept piling up hits (11, their 10th time with at least 10) and big innings (their fifth with at least four runs).
But the story was the Padres pitching staff following up 8-0 and 2-0 victories by blanking the Rockies again, the first time since 1988 a Padres staff has recorded three shutouts in a row and the first time they have ever shut out a team over an entire three-game series.
It was just the 34th time since 1901 that any MLB team has done it.
And on the heels of a rough spate, King and fellow starters Nick Pivetta and Kyle Hart were practically unhittable. Going back to Randy Vásquez’s start Wednesday against the Athletics, the past four Padres starters have allowed one run and seven hits in 27 innings.
This four-game stretch follows a turn through the rotation in which the team’s five starters had an 11.21 ERA and 2.55 WHIP while working 17⅔ innings.
The Rockies were 6-for-72 against Padres starters. And Kyle Farmer had four of those hits. That was 3-for-25 in seven innings against Pivetta, 1-for-19 in six innings against Hart and 2-for-28 against King. Pivetta and King walked one batter apiece.
In all, the Rockies were 9-for-88 in the series. They arrived in San Diego with a 3-9 record and a .243 batting average and departed with 12 losses and a .218 average.
King began Sunday’s game by retiring 13 straight batters before Michael Toglia grounded a single through the right side with one out in the fifth. The Rockies’ next baserunner came on a walk in the eighth. Ezequiel Tovar’s one-out single in the ninth was their second hit.
The Padres started scoring right away, as they have in half their games.
Eight Padres batted in the bottom of the first, as the Padres scored in the first inning for the eighth game. This time, more than they had all season.
Their four-run barrage began with Fernando Tatis Jr. striking out before Luis Arraez singled and Manny Machado walked.
After Xander Bogaerts hit a fly ball out to right field is when the scoring got started. And it was three consecutive RBI hits by players who were in spring training on minor-league deals that did it — singles by Oscar Gonzalez and Yuli Gurriel and a double by Jose Iglesias.
Another double by Iglesias led to the Padres’ fifth run, in the fourth inning, when Tatis’ double-play grounder with the bases loaded drove in Iglesias from third. Manny Machado’s led-off double and Jason Heyward’s one-out single made it 6-0 in the seventh.
