SAN DIEGO — After hitting the apparent ground-rule double that gave the San Diego Padres a walk-off victory on the same day they confirmed the loss of their star right fielder, Jurickson Profar rounded first base. Then he veered off across the infield and began gesturing demonstratively, he later insisted, toward the home crowd at Petco Park.
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He also confirmed that, by not touching second, he had knowingly settled for a two-run single.
“I don’t care,” Profar said. “I care about those two that went home.”
Those words could resonate for this particular team. Two years ago, Jorge Alfaro delivered a walk-off in downtown San Diego and inspired the slogan known as LFGSD. Now, if they want to deliver a similarly memorable season, the Padres might have to embrace the power of IDGAF.
Monday provided a template. There was the final result — Padres 7, Washington Nationals 6 — and there was what led up to it. In the afternoon, the Padres announced that Fernando Tatis Jr. had been diagnosed with a stress reaction in his right leg — an injury that could sideline the team’s most dynamic player until late in the summer — and that veteran starter Yu Darvish would remain on the injured list because of elbow inflammation. In the evening, the Padres took an early lead, went 19 consecutive plate appearances without a base runner, then grinded their way to history.
For the second time in the franchise’s existence, they won a game after trailing by at least three runs in extra innings. They had previously done so on July 5, 1969, back when they were a fledgling expansion team. The next few months will determine exactly how June 24, 2024, will be remembered.
“I don’t think we played our best brand of baseball today,” rookie center fielder Jackson Merrill said, “but when you can play your worst version of baseball and still win a ballgame, that’s something to look at. That’s something fun to look at.”
MVP and the P stands for Profar 👑 pic.twitter.com/ku5VMwrt2z
— San Diego Padres (@Padres) June 25, 2024
The hero of the game was a familiar character and, in the moment, a heated one. With the Padres trailing in the bottom of the 10th, Donovan Solano doubled to advance automatic runner Jake Cronenworth to third, Merrill singled to pull San Diego to within a run, Ha-Seong Kim walked, Tyler Wade supplied a sacrifice bunt, and after David Peralta popped out, the Nationals opted to intentionally walk Luis Arraez to load the bases with the home team down to its final out. That brought Profar to the plate in a certain mood.
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“I felt disrespected,” the left fielder said.
Seven pitches — including a high-and-tight fastball that knocked Profar on his back — later, he sent a splitter to the right-field gap and drew some long stares from the Nationals as he celebrated not far from their dugout. Profar, for his part, explained after the game that he had been directing his jubilation at a different audience.
“The fans,” Profar said. “‘Let’s go.’”
Many had stayed for the bottom of the 10th. And quite a few had left in the top of the inning after Nick Senzel homered to give the Nationals a three-run lead. A loss at that point might have felt inevitable, even more so because of the news from earlier in the day: Already missing a few key players, the Padres will be without Tatis for at least several weeks and maybe multiple months.
“It’s a huge gap,” Tatis said late Monday, when asked about a timeline for his return. “I don’t want to put it out there because people are gonna expect stuff. But it’s gonna be some time. We know with the right stuff we’re trying to aim after the All-Star game, but we’re talking about something serious in my bone, in my right leg.”
The genesis of Tatis’ injury remains unclear, but the outfielder described experiencing full-body cramps after the team’s season-opening series in South Korea in March. It grew more serious, he said, when he experienced discomfort in his right quad during an early April game in San Francisco. Now, after more than two months of playing through a worsening ailment, he will rest until his leg heals.
“It’s tough,” said Tatis, who plans to continue taking swings while on the injured list. “You just want to come out here and show your fans, the people that love this game, how I really take care of myself in the offseason, how picky I am with my body and in every single area. But at the end of the day, this game, it’s just hard and it’s just gonna happen, stuff like that.”
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“It really blows,” Merrill said. “When I found out, I was in a really bad mood. One of my best friends on the team. He’s really kind of been a little leader to me, especially being kind of close to my age range. So, emotionally, it kind of was really hard for me to kind of accept that I wasn’t gonna have him out there for a bit. But I’m really grateful that we kind of found it now. I’m glad he’s not going to play on it, because I want to play with him for the next eight or nine years rather than the next two. I want him to get healthy.”
The Padres must forge ahead with shaky health and limited depth. Already, all five members of the roster with nine-figure contracts have gone on the injured list at least once or missed time despite avoiding the IL. Profar, the unexpected MVP of this season, has been playing through lingering patellar tendinitis. San Diego on Monday resorted to more small ball than usual, including when Kim laid down a second-inning bunt to score Cronenworth.
Yet there was Profar a couple of hours later, winning the game with his latest big hit and turning the infield into a temporary mosh pit. The 31-year-old cannot make more than $2.5 million this year, but he already has delivered as an emotional fulcrum.
“Something that means a lot to us is he wanted to be here, and he expressed that very early on,” Cronenworth said. “We all wanted him to be here as well. We were disappointed when he left last year, but it’s great to have him back. The year he’s having, that’s who he is, man.”
A fitting example came in the bottom of the 10th, in what Profar didn’t do.
“My guy probably got a little too excited,” Tatis said with a smile. “It’s all right. It’s all right.”
“We love our guys, but it doesn’t matter who’s in here,” Merrill said at his locker. “We’re going to all be part of a team that just wants to win. … Profar didn’t get a double on the last one. He said, ‘I don’t care. We won the game.’ And I love that.”
(Photo of Tyler Wade and Manny Machado dumping a cooler on Jurickson Profar: Denis Poroy / Getty Images)
