Commentary: Padres pitchers show Phillies they hold inside track to World Series

The San Diego Padres should reach the World Series because although the Philadelphia Phillies may have the better ace, the Padres have the better pitching staff.

A big engine to this team’s success since April, Padres pitching came through again Wednesday in a desperately needed victory at Petco Park.

Don’t be fooled by the 8-5 score. Blake Snell did his job, despite the four runs charged to him, leading the comeback in Game 2 that evened the National League Championship Series at a game apiece.

Snell never came unglued, amid a flurry of parachute hits and defensive miscues that led to four runs in a 37-pitch second inning. He regrouped, escaping and throwing three scoreless innings. A deep offense and sharp bullpen took it from there.

Winning a playoff series from the Phillies will be tougher, in comparison to the Mets and Dodgers, whom the Padres ousted to advance to the franchise’s first NLCS in 24 years.

But there’s too much pure stuff within San Diego’s grooved, healthy pitching staff for the Padres not to rate as a slight favorite to reach the franchise’s third World Series.

Pencil them for three more wins against the Phillies, though it may take five more games to get them.

Though Snell lacked his best breaking pitches until the fourth inning, he finished five innings while again outproducing his counterpart.

In hot weather conducive to hitting, Phillies starter Aaron Nola gave up six runs in 4⅔ innings.

“My whole goal is to try to beat Nola,” Snell said.

“I knew it was going to be tough because I know how good he is, but your goal is to always try to outlast their starter, and if you do that, usually you set your team up for a chance to win.”

The Phillies’ four softly hit singles in the four-run second didn’t mean Snell was entirely unlucky. Bryce Harper and Nick Castellanos put nasty two-strike pitches into play for singles.

But the combination of four singles and four defensive miscues would’ve unraveled many starters – including Snell in other months or other years.

“The outcome is the outcome,” he said of his baseball Zen. “There’s no changing it.”

The Padres are 6-2 this postseason games in started by Snell, Joe Musgrove and Yu Darvish.

All three showed better pure stuff than their Dodgers counterparts.

All three posted high strikeout rates that correlate to October success.

The Padres are scary also because they boast relievers with high-octane pitches in Robert Suarez, Luis Garcia and closer Josh Hader. No other relief trio in either league championship series has better pure stuff.

Hader – who threw only 50 innings this year and is peaking at the perfect time – closed out the Phillies with triple-digit velocity.

Suarez may have thrown the game’s pivotal pitch when he faced a locked-in Harper with one out in the eighth.

Harper homered in Game 1 and had singled and doubled Wednesday, extending his MLB record of consecutive postseason games with an extra-base hit to seven.

Suarez threw a sinker clocked at 99. Harper grounded it to third baseman Manny Machado, who began a double play, preserving the 8-5 lead.

“Robert is really special,” said Padres reliever Nick Martinez, who was the staff’s sharpest performer in Game 2 in throwing two scoreless innings. “He’s a hidden gem for us. Not many people talk about him around the league, but he’s a superstar.”

The Phillies will pose problems, beginning with Harper.

They boast a dominant ace in Zack Wheeler. He certainly had better pure stuff than any of the four Dodgers starters the Padres faced last week and that was the biggest reason the Padres lost the opener 2-0.

Wheeler averaged 97.2 mph with his fastball across seven scoreless innings.

But Wheeler had to soar to overcome another strong showing by Darvish.

If form holds, Musgrove will have better pure stuff in Game 3 than his Phillies counterpart Friday in Philadelphia. Behind him will be a powerful bullpen.

Hader’s explosive fastballs are beating the heat of Padres Hall of Fame closers Goose Gossage, Rollie Fingers and Trevor Hoffman in their peak years and produced one of the great innings in Padres history Saturday , when the lefty struck out Dodgers stars Mookie Betts, Trea Turner and Freddie Freeman to send the Padres into the NLCS.

It’s an October heat wave capable of sending the Padres to their first World Series since pitchers Kevin Brown and Sterling Hitchcock led them past Atlanta in 1998.