Before his first game back at Petco Park as a member of the New York Yankees, former Padres outfielder Juan Soto met with the San Diego media. He said he loved his time in America's Finest City and had nothing but nice things to say about the Padres fan base. In fact, there's something he regrets about the year and a half he spent calling Petco Park home.
"I tried my best, I played hard every day, but I didn't play my best. That's one of the things I was kind of, like, sad about because I didn't show them, really, how great I can be," said Soto.
He decided to try and show them a year too late. Soto launched a monster 2-run home run off Yu Darvish to jump-start an 8-0 Yankees blowout in front of 43,505 fans in the East Village. The loss drops the Friars to an inexplicable 10-17 at home this year (they're 17-10 on the road).
Darvish came into the start riding a streak of 25 straight scoreless innings. That ended in the 1st when Aaron Judge hit a sacrifice fly to bring home Anthony Volpe and give the Yankees a 1-0 lead. But the night went completely sideways in the 3rd inning.
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With two outs Darvish left a pitch up in the strike zone to Soto, who crushed it 423 feet into the right field seats for a 2-run home run. That was the start of a nightmare inning for Yu.
Aaron Judge followed with a solo homer into the left field seats to make it 4-0. Two batters later Giancarlo Stanton hit a rocket into the 2nd deck of the Western Metal Supply Building, giving the Yankees a 5-run rally where all the runs scored on mammoth dingers. In the 4th inning Gleyber Torres unloaded on another long home run, the 4th off Darvish, who had only allowed two gopher balls all season. And when this New York team hits home runs, they REALLY hit home runs. The exit velocities on those bombs:
107.9 MPH
104.9 MPH
110.9 MPH
108.7 MPH
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That's elite by any metric. Soto, by the way, also doubled and walked on the night while the Padres had three total hits, all of them singles. But, the great thing about baseball is you don't have to wait long to get another chance to win. The Padres can even the series on Saturday night with Dylan Cease on the mound against Marcus Stroman.
