– by Adesina O. Koiki
A Lot of Sports Talk editor-in-chief
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BALTIMORE — Even after living out a lifelong dream just a couple of weeks ago, Jurickson Profar’s magical season does not seem to have an end in sight. His latest feat of heroics on Friday night continued the San Diego Padres’ best run of the season.
Profar smacked two home runs, the second of which being a tie-breaking two-run shot in the top of the ninth inning as the Padres defeated the Baltimore Orioles 6-4 inside Oriole Park at Camden Yards on Friday night. Ha-Seong Kim and Luis Campusano, the No. 8 and No. 9 hitters in the Padres lineup, each had two hits while Xander Bogaerts went 3-for-4 as San Diego has won a season-high six straight games and is now tied with Atlanta for the second Wild Card spot in the National League.
One night after Dylan Cease threw a no-hitter just further south in Washington, just the second no-no in Padres franchise history, San Diego used seven pitchers tonight — including rookie Andy Mazur to start the game — to navigate through a lineup and team that leads the Majors in home runs and held Baltimore to just two runs before Anthony Santander’s solo home run in the bottom of the eighth sparked a comeback that tied the game at 4-4.
But three batters into the ninth, the Padres got to Orioles closer Craig Kimbrel, who allowed a one-out single to Campusano before Profar, who had homered in the sixth to tie the game at 2-2, hit a line drive to centerfield off a fastball that sailed 431 feet, giving San Diego the lead for good.
The two blasts from the outfielder gives him 18 home runs, just two shy from a career-high set in both 2018 and 2019 while playing for the Texas Rangers and Oakland Athletics, respectively. Many of his career-high batting totals are set to be broken in 2024, a year in which Profar was named to the All-Star Game for the first time in his 11-year career. (To boot, he also was named a starter for the National League by the fans.)
*Editor’s note: Above the byline is the photo gallery from Friday evening’s game, with photos taken by DC-area photographer Rodney Pierce. After clicking on a photo to enlarge the picture, press the left and right arrow buttons on either side of the caption to scroll through the rest of the pictures that appear on the first page, Also, click on the numbers and/or arrow appearing immediately below the picture grid to load the next set of photos. There are 36 pictures in total.
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