Xander Bogaerts falls a hit short of the cycle

Padres games at Coors Field have turned into a running bit this week, and Thursday's version had Xander Bogaerts at the center of it. San Diego has now gone deep on the first pitch of the second inning in three straight games there, and this time it was Bogaerts doing the honors.

That home run was just the start. Bogaerts came back up later in the same second inning and tripled, becoming the first player in Padres franchise history to homer and triple in the same frame, according to beat reporting on the game. San Diego put up a 7-run second and led 7-1 before the frame was even over.

Two innings later, Bogaerts added a double, and suddenly the whole ballpark understood what was on the line. A single would complete the cycle — something that's happened exactly twice before in San Diego's 58-year history, and both of those came at this same stadium.

It didn't happen. Bogaerts struck out looking and then swinging in his final two trips to the plate, closing the door on what would have been the third cycle in Padres history and just the second ever hit on the road. Close as it gets without actually getting there.

The near-miss barely dented the bigger story: San Diego is rolling. The Padres closed out the series with a 9-2 win, finishing the week 3-1 at Coors Field with 29 runs and 52 hits over the four games. That kind of offensive output, paired with pitching that's held up, has the Padres up 4 games on Arizona for the final NL Wild Card spot with their magic number down to 6.

Bogaerts, who signed his long-term deal with San Diego to be exactly this kind of everyday middle-of-the-order presence, is doing it at the best possible time. A near-cycle in a laugher is a nice line for the box score, but the real headline out of Denver is that the Padres are playing October baseball with real urgency in mid-September — and getting exactly the kind of results that make a Wild Card spot look less like a scramble and more like a formality.