SAN DIEGO — The eyes had it, San Diego Padres manager Bud Black said.
“I liked the look in the eye and I liked the response,” Black said about a trip to the mound he made in the ninth inning to check on starting pitcher Eric Stults. “The response was real.”
So were the Padres for the first time this month. Stults threw a complete-game four-hitter, and the Padres snapped a 10-game losing streak with a 2-1 victory over the Colorado Rockies at Petco Park on Tuesday night.
It was the first win by the Padres (41-50) since they beat the Miami Marlins on June 28. The Rockies (43-48) had won nine of the previous 11 games against the Padres before Tuesday’s setback.
“Every team will go through stretches of a three- or four- or five-game losing streak and then it’s snapped and you get back on track,” Black said. “But when you get as deep as this one, I think there’s a tendency to really, really press more than any other time during the course of a season. I felt that a little bit with some of our guys, which is a natural reaction. So this is a good win.”
Stults (7-7) didn’t give up a hit until Josh Rutledge led off the fifth with an infield single. He also allowed a single and double by catcher Wilin Rosario. Nolan Arenado’s RBI single with two outs in the ninth ended Stults’ shutout bid.
“(Black) just came out and asked how I felt,” said Stults, who threw his fourth career complete game and second of the season. “He kind of gave me that look. I looked him straight in the eyes. I felt good.”
Stults struck out five and walked three on 122 pitches, 78 of them for strikes. The San Diego pitcher also had two singles in three at-bats and scored a run.
“I felt like tonight the big thing for me was my tempo felt better,” Stults said. “When the tempo is off, you can’t get away with much. But I really felt like my fastball down and away was probably the best it’s been in a very long time. So I felt like that was the key to set up the at-bats.”
The Padres have won Stults’ last seven starts at Petco. In his last six starts at Petco, Stults is 4-0 with a 1.33 ERA.
“We rolled over a lot of soft stuff for him,” Rockies manager Walt Weiss said of Stults. “We couldn’t get anything together offensively.”
Jhoulys Chacin (8-4) worked six innings, allowing a run on five hits. He struck out four and walked two. It was Chacin’s first loss since May 16 against the St. Louis Cardinals.
“It’s frustrating when you are trying to give your team a chance to win because (Stults) pitched a really good game,” Chacin said. “He made solid pitches all the way through.”
Alexi Amarista, who went 2-for-4, had an RBI triple off Chacin in the third and a run-scoring single off reliever Wilton Lopez in the seventh.
NOTES: Padres GM Josh Byrnes said the club is reconsidering whether to obtain pitching help before the July 31 trade deadline. “We were very aggressive kicking the tires a couple of weeks ago,” Byrnes said. “The prices we were hearing on some pitchers were pretty high and obviously we’re always assessing where we are with what we should do. And again, right now we need to sort of climb back in (the NL West race) before we make any move that is too short in nature, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t make moves that could benefit this year and other years.” … Carlos Gonzalez missed his second consecutive game with an injured middle finger on his right hand. He is listed as day-to-day. … The Padres signed first-round pick (13th overall) Hunter Renfroe, a former Mississippi State outfielder, to a deal worth about $2.7 million. … The Rockies acquired RHP Mitchell Boggs from the St. Louis Cardinals in exchange for one international signing bonus slot (fourth slot). Boggs will be optioned to Double-A Tulsa. The Rockies designated RHP Joe Gardner for assignment to create a spot on the 40-man roster. … Padres RHP Miles Mikolas was called up from Triple-A Tucson. To make room, RHP Tyson Ross was demoted to Tucson. … Padres president and CEO Tom Garfinkel resigned. Executive chairman Ron Fowler will assume Garfinkel’s duties. … The game drew a crowd of 22,733.