Grisham fuels Padres' uprising at bottom of the order

SAN DIEGO – After thrilling Padres fans with his latest October heroics, Trent Grisham delivered the ultimate parting message to the sellout crowd of 45,137 at Petco Park.

“San Diego, y’all showed out tonight,” Grisham said in a postgame interview with FS1’s Tom Verducci. “It was surreal being out there. Let’s [expletive] go, San Diego.”

Equally surreal is Grisham’s unlikely rise from a light-hitting center fielder to a surprise offensive star this postseason. His third home run of the playoffs proved to be the difference in the Padres’ 2-1 win over the Dodgers in Game 3 of the National League Division Series on Friday night, leaving San Diego one win away from its first NL Championship Series appearance since 1998.

Grisham led off the bottom of the fourth inning by winning a left-on-left matchup against the Dodgers’ Andrew Heaney, driving a first-pitch fastball over the right-field fence for a solo home run that extended the Padres’ lead to 2-0 and sent the Petco Park crowd into a frenzy.

“It was awesome just to put us up and give us a little more insurance,” said Grisham, who went 2-for-4 with an RBI while batting eighth. “We knew it was going to be a tough game, so just to get that extra run felt big.”

Grisham, who also took Cy Young Award winners Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer deep during the NL Wild Card Series against the Mets, is now hitting .389 (7-for-18) with a 1.411 OPS over six playoff games this year. His three homers are tied with Greg Vaughn (1998) and Ken Caminiti (1996) for the second-most in a single postseason in Padres history, trailing only Jim Leyritz, who hit four in 1998.

• Postseason ticket information

“I really just kind of feel like myself again,” Grisham said. “That's really what it is. Being able to compete every day and just go out there and help the team win in multiple facets. That's really been the biggest thing for me, and it's been great.”

Such a breakout felt impossible to envision as recently as last month, when Grisham hit only .107 in September to cap a miserable regular season at the plate. But Grisham’s recent production has proved so vital that Padres manager Bob Melvin joked that he was tempted to move the 25-year-old slugger up into the cleanup spot.

“I feel like hitting him in fourth, but he's doing well where he is,” Melvin said. “The bottom of our order is having a lot of production. We want to try to keep some consistency throughout. But he has the ability to do these things. I think the thing that really is incredible is where he's gone to at the end of the season to where he is right now in the postseason. This is kind of who he is as a player, but it was a tough road getting there.”

The Padres have plenty of star power atop their lineup, which is headlined by Juan Soto and Manny Machado, but their offense has received a huge lift from the bottom of the order through the first two rounds of their playoff run.

Led by Grisham, the club’s 7-8-9 hitters are hitting .345 (19-for-55) with a 1.038 OPS and three home runs over six postseason games. For context, the 7-8-9 hitters for the other five other playoff teams this year are batting only .176 (58-for-329) with a .527 OPS and six homers.

“We’re just trying to get good pitches to hit,” No. 9 hitter Austin Nola said. “That’s our goal. We pass the baton to the next guy. That’s the way it works here. Get up there, battle, make contact. Good things are going to happen for us.”

Nola, who logged a .649 OPS over 110 games during the regular season, reached base in his first three plate appearances on Friday, going 2-for-3 with a walk to cap a banner day for him and his brother, Aaron, who gave up only one unearned run over six-plus innings to put the Phillies on the cusp of the NLCS. The Padres’ catcher is also enjoying a recent tear at the plate, hitting .389 with a .929 OPS and two doubles over six postseason games.

The hot bats at the bottom of the order certainly bode well for the Padres, who know they’ll need contributions from all corners of their roster to close out the battle-tested Dodgers.

“They've been doing it, man,” Machado said. “I can't preach it enough: It takes everyone to win. It's going to take the whole squad. ... It's going to take us all to get us to where we want to be. And everyone's been doing their part.”