SEATTLE — Nelson Cruz hit his major league-leading 15th home run, Mike Zunino connected twice, and the Seattle Mariners hit a season-high six long balls in an 11-4 rout of the San Diego Padres on Tuesday night.
Cruz’s drive came in the eighth inning off San Diego reliever Frank Garces, who had already given up homers to Zunino and Justin Ruggiano an inning earlier. The six homers were tied for the most ever hit by the Mariners in their park, the last coming in 2004 against Kansas City.
Zunino hit a 439-foot solo shot leading off the sixth inning then added a two-run homer in the seventh. Zunino began the night hitting .159, but finished with three hits — his first three-hit game of the season — and the second multi-homer game of his career.
Seattle starter James Paxton (1-2) threw six shutout innings for his first victory, as the Mariners won their fourth in a row.
Kyle Seager and Logan Morrison also homered for Seattle.
Seager lined a three-run homer, his fourth of the season, as part of Seattle’s four-run first inning against San Diego starter Ian Kennedy (2-2). Morrison hit his fifth homer in the past 10 games with a solo shot off the top of the wall in right-center field in the third inning.
Kennedy lasted just 4⅔ innings, and allowed two of the five homers. San Diego has given up 49 home runs this season, tied with Milwaukee for the most in baseball.
Paxton was inconsistent, but limited the Padres to three hits and pitched out of bases loaded situations in the second and fourth innings.
In both the second and fourth innings, Paxton got the first two outs with ease and then fell apart. He walked three consecutive batters in the second all on full counts before getting Clint Barmes to pop out, also on a 3-2 pitch. Paxton threw 38 pitches in that inning, 30 of them to the final four batters.
Paxton was a bit more efficient in the fourth but was in the same situation, giving up two-out singles to Jedd Gyorko and Will Middlebrooks, and another 3-2 walk to Cory Spangenberg. This time, Paxton struck out Barmes looking to end the threat.
