A pitchers’ duel between the starter the Yankees kept (Clarke Schmidt) and the starter the Padres insisted upon (the aptly named Michael King) played to a stalemate.
A tie game after six innings, it was the San Diego bullpen that resigned.
The Yankees exploded for a 10-run seventh inning in which rocket after rocket turned a good game into an unexpected demolition in a 12-3 rout in front of 38,090 in The Bronx on a foggy Tuesday.
The Yankees (20-16) halted a three-game skid and will look to take the series behind Max Fried on Wednesday, when they will hope to take some of the momentum from their biggest inning of the season and their largest in nearly a decade.
Austin Wells watches his grand slam during the seventh inning of the Yankees’ 12-3 blowout home win over the Padres on May 6, 2025.
“That was amazing,” Ben Rice said after the Yankees scored the most runs in a frame since plating 11 against the Rangers in July 2015.
Tim Hill and Fernando Cruz combined to allow one run in the top of the seventh, which at the time felt significant: The Yankees fell behind by a run and had registered just three hits all night against King.
Wandy Peralta reacts after the Padres gave up 10 seventh-inning runs to the Yankees, which included a grand slam to catcher Austin Wells.
But once King exited, the Yankees sent 13 batters to the plate in a seven-hit, three-walk, one-grand-slam bottom of the seventh that never seemed to end.
It was not just that every ball was “scalded,” as manager Aaron Boone put it, but that the balls were scalded against talented lefties Adrian Morejon and former Yankee Wandy Peralta.
The historic inning started in an odd place: Jasson Domínguez began the day 3-for-36 against southpaws, increasingly benched against opposing lefties. He wasted no time trying to prove himself, jumping on a first-pitch slider from Morejon that he lined into left-center and hustled into a double.
Catcher Austin Wells (28) hits a grand slam during the seventh inning when the New York Yankees played the San Diego Padres Tuesday, May 6, 2025.
“It means a lot,” Domínguez said of finding success as a righty batter.
“It’s fun to watch him run. He can really go,” Boone said. “Kind of set the tone for that inning.”
The tone involved loud, persistent contact, excellent plate discipline and a parade of base runners. Successive singles from Anthony Volpe and Austin Wells scored the game-tying run. After Oswaldo Cabrera’s attempted bunt resulted in a foul out, pinch hitter Paul Goldschmidt walked to load the bases, then Trent Grisham walked for the go-ahead run.
Rice’s two-run double — 17 of his 28 hits this season have gone for extra bases — provided distance. Aaron Judge was intentionally walked, and Bellinger pulled an RBI single into right.
Cody Bellinger salutes Aaron Judge (left) after the Yankees star’s solo home run in the fourth inning of the Bombers’ blowout win over the Padres.
Volpe knocked an RBI single that loaded the bases for Wells, who worked a 2-2 count before pulverizing a Peralta changeup into the right field seats for the first grand slam of his career.
From behind to bulldozing in the course of a few minutes.
“That was a lot of fun to watch — a lot of fun to be a part of,” said Wells, whose five RBIs in one inning were the most by a Yankee in a single frame since Alex Rodriguez drove in seven in the sixth inning against the Rays in 2009.
In the inning, five lefties took at-bats against solid southpaws and combined to go 4-for-4 with a walk.
“Good lefties, too, that are tough on lefties,” Boone said.
Clarke Schmidt and Aaron Boone talke with the umpire after Schmidt was called for a bases-loaded balk during the fourth inning of the Yankees’ blowout win over the Padres.
The onslaught took attention away from King — a piece San Diego insisted upon in the Juan Soto trade — who allowed two runs through six innings.
Schmidt — whom the Yankees managed to keep in a swap in which four arms went to San Diego — matched him through six perhaps less-dominant but still effective innings in which he also let up two runs.
Forgotten by the end was a back-and-forth fourth, when the Padres scored two through some hard contact (a Manny Machado single into left), some soft contact (a shift-enabled chopped single through the left side from Jackson Merrill) and some good fortune (Schmidt balked with the bases loaded before a Jason Heyward sacrifice fly provided a second run).
Yankees first baseman Ben Rice reacts after he connects on a two-run RBI double against the San Diego Padres in the seventh inning at Yankee Stadium in The Bronx.
The Yankees responded in the bottom of the inning, when Judge drilled his 12th homer of the season, and they manufactured a run, Bellinger going first-to-third on a single and scoring on a throwing error.
That inning would look tiny by the seventh.
“When they’re clicking like that,” Schmidt said of his offense, “it’s really fun to be on this side.”
