Ethan Salas hit the first two home runs of his major league career, Jackson Merrill finished with three hits and the San Diego Padres beat the Colorado Rockies 9-3 in Denver on Wednesday night.
Samad Taylor, Jake Cronenworth and Dustin Harris had two hits each and Robbie Ray tossed six solid innings to help the Padres win for the ninth time in the last 10 games. San Diego (83-69) retained the third National League wild-card spot, one game behind the Philadelphia Phillies and 1 1/2 games back of the Chicago Cubs, who hold the top spot in the wild-card standings.
Salas, playing in his ninth game since making his major league debut on Sept. 2, drove in three runs. At 20 years, 107 days old, he is the youngest catcher in MLB history with a multi-homer game, according to MLB.com.
Kyle Karros homered for Colorado (56-96), which has lost nine of its last 10.
The Padres took a 2-0 lead in the first inning on a sacrifice fly followed by Cronenworth’s RBI single. The Rockies answered with a run in the bottom of the frame on a bases-loaded groundout by Adael Amador.
Salas made it 3-1 when he led off the second inning with his first homer of the night, Harris hit a triple to right in the fourth to tack on another run and San Diego broke it open in the fifth.
Merrill started the rally with a one-out single, and Xander Bogaerts drew a walk that ended Adams’ night. After a groundout moved the runners up, Taylor drove them in with a single and Salas followed with a two-run homer off Nick Frasso to make it 8-1.
Adams (0-1) allowed six runs on eight hits over 4 1/3 innings.
Ty France’s RBI double in the sixth extended the lead for Ray (13-8), who allowed just one hit through the first five innings. He gave up a two-run homer to Karros in the sixth, Karros’ 12th home run of the season, but got the next two to end his night.
He allowed three runs on three hits and fanned six over six innings.
