SAN DIEGO -- The Padres have a month left to decide their fate in this topsy-turvy National League Wild Card race. They’ve got a brutal schedule and some tricky obstacles to overcome.

They also have Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado at the top of their lineup -- and when those two swing the bat like this, well, the Padres will take their chances against anyone.

Tatis and Machado both demolished majestic two-run home runs late in an emphatic 10-2 victory over Houston on Saturday night. Machado’s was a seventh-inning moonshot that ignited a once-nervy Petco Park crowd. Tatis’ was an eighth-inning exclamation point, punctuated with his trademark bat flip and stutter-step.

• Box score

It sure looked different from any game the Padres have played lately, and rightly so. They haven’t had too many wins like this one over the past month.

“It felt like when Manny put a charge into that ball, it took something with it,” said Padres manager Jayce Tingler. “It took a weight off the shoulders. You started to see the smiles and the body language and all that.”

When the dust settled, the Padres remained half a game back of the Reds in the race for the second NL Wild Card spot. But they also gained a game of separation on the Phillies and Cardinals, pursuers who both lost.

“It’s getting intense as far as the playoff picture,” said Wil Myers, who added a two-run shot of his own in between the Machado and Tatis home runs. “It’s a lot of fun to come out here and play with the games meaning something each and every night.”

Joe Musgrove continued to make his case as the Padres’ most reliable starter, working 5 1/3 innings of two-run ball. Coming off his shutout in Anaheim eight days ago, Musgrove was knocked around in the first two innings. But, as ever, he did his best to limit the damage and give his offense a chance.

This time, the offense capitalized.

The Padres broke out for four runs in the second inning, including two on Tatis’ opposite-field, two-run single with two outs and the bases loaded. Tatis finished 2-for-3 with a pair of walks and four RBIs.

Machado, meanwhile, went 2-for-4, adding a double and a hit-by-pitch to his 453-foot home run in the seventh inning -- his longest of the season. All year, the Padres have experimented with different batting orders, but they might be onto something here with Tatis hitting first and Machado second. The logic is sound enough:

“It makes it tough on teams when those guys are dialed in,” said Tingler. “Obviously at 1-2, those guys are going to get the most at-bats.”

The game hung in the balance until a fateful seventh inning. Dinelson Lamet, newly transitioned into a relief role, recorded two outs in the top half of the frame. But he also walked a pair. With both of those runners in scoring position, Tingler called for Pierce Johnson in the game’s highest-leverage moment.

It was the clearest indicator that these games have reached a different level of urgency for the Padres. On a different night earlier in the season, perhaps Tingler gives Lamet some leash to work his way through the inning. But Lamet had walked a pair, and Tingler simply preferred Johnson against Alex Bregman, the Astros’ No. 3 hitter.

That decision paid off: Bregman flied harmlessly to Tatis in center.

In the bottom half of the frame, Tatis worked a one-out walk against Astros reliever Cristian Javier. Two pitches later, the right-hander left a belt-high fastball over the middle of the plate, and Machado made no mistake. After a Jake Cronenworth walk, Myers tacked on a 382-foot blast into the second level of the Western Metal Supply Co. Building.

Then, in the eighth, Tatis brought a thunderous encore -- a 444-foot drive into the left-field seats at 115 mph. It was his NL-leading 37th home run of the season, sending Petco Park into a frenzy once again.

“Some daggers late in the game,” Myers said. “It was good to see the offense really coming around like that. That was something we’ve been really needing for a while now.”

No kidding.

“You take wins any way you can get them,” said Musgrove. “But to have a win like this where we fight and claw all the way up to that seventh, eighth inning, and then we blow it wide open, it’s nice. … All around, a good team win.”