<\/p>\n
KANSAS CITY, Mo. \u2014 Any team can beat any team on any night. Anything can happen in extra innings.<\/p>\n
And on and on go the qualifiers that speak to baseball\u2019s unpredictability and help to justify any number of losses in a 162-game season.<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s game, from the errors in the middle to the improbable ninth inning to the bedlam of the 10th, was about as unhinged as baseball gets.<\/p>\n
But the Padres are well past the process being anywhere near as important as the result.<\/p>\n
The result is what matters to a team hanging onto its postseason chances by its fingernails and trying to prove to the front office it is worth investing in at the trade deadline.<\/p>\n
So here is the result:<\/p>\n
The Royals beat the Padres 7-6 Friday with a walk-off single by Carter Jensen in a 10th inning that saw the Padres score three times and the Royals four.<\/p>\n
Now, about how the game got there.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was a tough one,\u201d Padres manager Craig Stammen said. \u201cMade a lot of good comebacks. There was a lot of good in there for our team, except for that last inning. Just unfortunate how that shook out.\u201d<\/p>\n
A flurry of insanity got the game to extra innings. And it got crazier from there.<\/p>\n
Royals\u2019 right-hander Alex Lange was one out from ending his team\u2019s first victory in six games when Ty France sent a sinker in the heart of the strike zone 421 feet and into the seats beyond left field to tie the game 3-3 in the top of the ninth.<\/p>\n
In the bottom of the ninth, the Royals were a hit or a well-placed grounder or a fly ball to the outfield from winning after loading the bases with no outs before Mason Miller struck out three consecutive batters.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s unbelievable,\u201d Xander Bogaerts said. \u201cTy with that big swing, and then you\u2019re going to extras. And before that, Miller coming out of that jam. And we put on three. Not one. Not two. Three. Yeah, tonight wasn\u2019t our night. This one stings, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miguel Andujar led off the 10th with his third double of the game, scoring automatic runner Jake Cronenworth. Pinch-hitter Sung-Mun Song laid down a sacrifice bunt that Royals pitcher Lucas Erceg bobbled, putting runners at the corners with no outs. A single by Fernando Tatis Jr. drove in Andujar and moved Song to third. After a groundout by Jackson Merrill moved Tatis up a base, Bogaerts\u2019 sacrifice fly gave the Padres a 6-3 lead.<\/p>\n
None of the Royals\u2019 four singles off Kyle Hart in the 10th had an exit velocity greater than 73 mph.<\/p>\n
Salvador Perez flared a ball to left to start the inning, moving Pasquantino, the automatic runner, to third. Pasquantino scored on an infield single by Michael Massey, and the Royals loaded the bases on Nick Loftin\u2019s bunt single.\u00a0Another run scored on Isaac Collins\u2019 groundout, and Jensen\u2019s single through the left side ended it.<\/p>\n
\u201cBroken-bat single, jam-shot single, groundout, and then another jam shot,\u201d Cronenworth said.<\/p>\n
The Padres came out of the All-Star break needing to win a lot of games. And the Royals, who were 21 games under .500 and tied for the major leagues\u2019 worst record heading into Friday, seemed a ripe first opponent.<\/p>\n
Michael King, ostensibly the Padres\u2019 only dependable starting pitcher, struggled through five innings but allowed only Lane Thomas\u2019 home run leading off the bottom of the second inning.<\/p>\n
The Padres took advantage of the kind of mistake bad teams make to go ahead 2-1 in the fifth inning, scoring two runs on an error by Massey. But an error by Bogaerts led to the Royals tying the game in the sixth.<\/p>\n
The Padres\u2019 two runs came after France took a curveball in the backside to start the inning and went to third on Andujar\u2019s one-out double. Luis Campusano followed with a grounder up the middle that was not going to score France until the ball caromed off Massey\u2019s glove at second base and rolled into center field. With that, both runners scored.<\/p>\n
Bradgley Rodriguez began the sixth by yielding a single to Thomas and walking Pasquantino. He then got a grounder to shortstop by Perez that would have at least eliminated Pasquantino at second base had Bogaerts not thrown the ball wide of the bag, allowing Thomas to score while Pasquantino ran to third base.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was a big play \u2014 the one with me, the error,\u201d Bogaerts said. \u201cI knew who was running at first and the one who hit it, so I figured I might get (the double play).\u201d<\/p>\n
But after the slow grounder off the end of Perez\u2019s bat, Bogaerts was just trying for one out, but he essentially overthought it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just trying to get one and stay with the double play in order,\u201d he said. \u201cI just I caught it, threw kind of off \u2014 not off balance, but not normally. \u2026 You kind of predetermine what you\u2019re going to do ahead of time, but I\u2019m not anticipating Salvy hitting one of those infield hits that I hit.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Royals took a 3-2 lead in the eighth inning after a single a fielder\u2019s choice and a stolen base on Massey\u2019s two-out single off Adrian Morej\u00f3n, who was working his second inning. France\u2019s 12th home run of the season tied it 3-3.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a tough one,\u201d France said. \u201cWe fought back, played a good game, and they put together a really good 10th inning.\u00a0They came to play today. That\u2019s really all it is. I thought we played a good game, and they just outplayed us that last inning.\u00a0\u2026 I know they\u2019re not having the best season, but they\u2019re still major league players, and there\u2019s a lot of talent on that team. They put together a good inning.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.sandiegouniontribune.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KANSAS CITY, Mo. \u2014 Any team can beat any team on any night. Anything can happen in extra innings. And on and on go the qualifiers that speak to baseball\u2019s unpredictability and help to justify any number of losses in a 162-game season. Friday\u2019s game, from the errors in the middle to the improbable ninth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2506997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[308544,25866,347943,21848,424062],"class_list":["post-2506996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-latest-headlines","tag-mlb","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-sports","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Padres-allow-4-runs-in-10th-start-post-All-Star-break-stretch-with.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2506996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2506996"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2506996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2506998,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2506996\/revisions\/2506998"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2506997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2506996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2506996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2506996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}