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The San Diego Padres were scuffling recently while losing eight of 11 games and falling out of the final wild-card spot in the National League.
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Two series sweeps later, the Padres are battling for the top berth in the race with two weeks left in the regular season.
San Diego (81-68) recorded a 6-4 victory over the San Francisco Giants on Sunday night to extend its winning streak to seven games and move 1 1/2 games behind the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs in the chase for the NL’s top wild-card spot.
The Padres will take that winning streak into Denver on Monday night for the first game of four contests with the Colorado Rockies.
Casey Mize (5-9, 3.70 ERA) will take the mound for San Diego against fellow right-hander Tomoyuki Sugano (12-9, 5.30).
Mize, the first overall pick in the 2018 MLB Draft, will make his eighth start since being acquired from the Detroit Tigers at the trade deadline last month. He is 1-3 with a 6.34 ERA since joining San Diego but will face a team that has dropped seven games in a row and is flirting with another 100-loss season.
Mize has faced the Rockies twice in his career, going 1-0 with a 4.22 ERA. The win came at Colorado on May 8, 2025, when he held the Rockies to a run over six innings.
Mize might not need to be that sharp to get another win in Colorado, because the Padres have 41 runs during their winning streak.
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San Diego realizes teams are playing competitive baseball, even if they don’t have postseason aspirations.
“Coming down the line, you play teams that might be out of it, but they’ve got some young kids,” Padres shortstop Xander Bogaerts said.
The Rockies (55-94) have several of those youngsters, including Cole Carrigg, Zac Veen and TJ Rumfield, who have made significant contributions in their first real opportunities to play at the major league level. However, as the losses have mounted — Colorado has lost 13 of its last 16 games — the frustration has, too.
“This last month has been very frustrating, because we certainly could have and should have won more games. And in terms of progress, 100 losses is a sightline,” Rockies general manager Josh Byrnes said Sunday. “It means something, but the White Sox [who lead the American League Central] lost 100 last year.
“I don’t ever think it’s good — in the minor leagues, in the major leagues — to rationalize losing, ever. We’re trying to win. Yeah, in terms of how young our team is and some of the players we brought in, there’s talent and there is progress. But it’s about winning, and we’re not there yet.”
Sugano is in his second major league season, but at age 36, he is the oldest player on the Colorado roster. He was the team’s best starter through July and was 12-5 with a 4.43 ERA a month ago. Since then, he has lost four of his last five starts, and his ERA has jumped nearly a run.
He will start against San Diego for the third time in his career and is 1-0 with a 2.31 ERA in his two previous outings, both of which came in April.
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–Field Level Media
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This story was originally published September 14, 2026 at 5:42 AM.