This was not just a win for San Diego. It was a badly needed reset. The Padres arrived at Sunday’s Dodger Game carrying a seven-game losing streak, had gone scoreless since Friday before Jackson Merrill’s RBI single in the fourth inning, and still found a way to snap the slump with a 5-2 victory that also denied Los Angeles a sweep. That is the sort of result that does more than pad a record. It stops the bleeding.
The decisive blow came from Manny Machado, whose three-run home run broke the game open and underlined exactly why the Dodgers can never quite relax when he is involved. The blast was Machado’s 26th home run, and it also set a franchise record for home runs hit against the Dodgers. If you are looking for the moment this game turned from tense to finished, that was it. One swing, and the evening belonged to San Diego.
How the Padres took control
The early work mattered too. San Diego had been stuck in an ugly run of form, with Sunday’s win its first since June 26, so there was real value in simply getting on the board. Merrill’s RBI single in the fourth inning ended the drought and gave the Padres a foothold. Luis Campusano also chipped in, while the Dodgers were left trying to piece together answers after Saturday’s shutout win had put them on the brink of a sweep.
Emmet Sheehan took the loss after allowing one walk in three innings, and Los Angeles never fully settled. JP Sears, by contrast, delivered the kind of outing that lets a team breathe. He worked 4 1/3 innings, gave up two runs, threw 96 pitches and finished with a 1.94 ERA. That was not perfection, but it was enough to hold the line until Machado blew the door open.
The Dodgers did get runs credited through Shohei Ohtani and Tommy Edman, but that was not nearly enough to keep pace once San Diego found its power. The other numbers tell the story too: Andy Pages was 0-for-4, Freddie Freeman went 0-for-2, and Los Angeles finished with too many empty at-bats for a team trying to finish a sweep.
What this result really says
For the Padres, this was about more than escaping one defeat. It was about avoiding the kind of spiral that starts to define a season. A seven-game losing streak is not a minor inconvenience. It is a warning sign. Ending it against the Dodgers, on the road, after being shut out the day before, makes the response feel all the more valuable.
For Los Angeles, the failure to complete the sweep will sting less than the larger picture. The Dodgers were in position to keep pressure on a division rival and instead let Machado take the game away. That is the danger in treating a series as already won. Baseball has a habit of punishing complacency, and Sunday was a sharp reminder.
The schedule does not wait, either. The Dodgers are set to begin a three-game home series against the Colorado Rockies on Monday at 7:10 p.m. PT. San Diego, meanwhile, gets to carry something far more useful than momentum: a little bit of relief.
Sometimes a season turns on a big speech, a lineup change or a trade. Sometimes it turns on a three-run homer that makes the whole mood look different. In this Dodger Game, Manny Machado did the simplest thing possible and delivered the loudest possible answer.
