Padres rally past Diamondbacks in Mexico City, Miller sets save streak mark

Ty France’s two home runs and Gavin Sheets’ two-run single flipped a wild night in Mexico City into a 6-4 Padres win, a comeback that fit Major League Baseball’s ambition to sell October-style drama far beyond the U.S. market. At Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú, where the altitude sits at 7,350 feet, San Diego erased an early four-run deficit and turned the opener of the Mexico City Series into a reminder of why the league keeps taking regular-season games overseas: the setting can manufacture offense, but it also creates a stage.

The Padres’ rally came in a four-run seventh inning, with France driving the offense and Sheets supplying the decisive hit. The result gave San Diego its eighth game in Mexico and came in the club’s first regular-season series there since 2023, another marker in MLB’s continued push into international markets. League planning for the two-game set, scheduled for April 25 and 26, made this the third regular-season visit to Mexico City, following Padres-Giants in 2023 and Astros-Rockies in 2024. With the ball carrying at a venue more than 2,000 feet higher than Denver, the league’s showcase delivered the kind of power surge and late swing in momentum that helps sell the sport abroad.

Mason Miller supplied the other headline. The hard-throwing reliever worked a perfect ninth for his 10th save, extending his scoreless streak to 34 2/3 innings dating to last season and breaking the Padres record of 33 2/3 innings set by Cla Meredith in 2006. Miller has not allowed a run since Aug. 5, 2025, and the streak stands as the eighth-longest shutout run by a major league reliever since 1961. For San Diego, that kind of dominance does more than finish games. It changes how a bullpen is deployed, how leads are protected, and how a club with postseason aspirations can manage tight games on the road.

Arizona left with its own concern after Zac Gallen was hit by a line drive on his pitching shoulder in the third inning. The Padres were also set to send Michael King to the mound Sunday against Ryne Nelson, leaving open the possibility of turning one comeback win in Mexico City into a series statement. In a league that increasingly treats global dates as both baseball and business, San Diego delivered the sort of result MLB wants on its international showcase: offense, tension and a closer who made history.