Washington Nationals at San Diego Padres: Final Score & Recap

The San Diego Padres handled the Washington Nationals 9-2 at Petco Park on September 9, 2026, and the outcome was largely settled in a decisive third inning. The DiamondIQ model entered the game favoring San Diego at 62% and reached 100% certainty by the final out, with the Padres outpacing Washington across a 16-hit performance against a Nationals club that managed just four hits and committed one error.

The third inning defined the contest from both directions. Washington briefly threatened when Keibert Ruiz hit a home run off Walker Buehler, a swing that shifted win probability 10.5 points in the Nationals' favor, and Jacob Young followed with an RBI single worth another 8.0 points. But San Diego answered emphatically in the bottom half against Jackson Kent, with Jackson Merrill delivering a triple that swung win probability 22.5 points toward the Padres, the single largest play of the game. Ty France extended the damage with a single worth 9.2 points, and the Padres sent the Nationals into a deficit they would never recover from. Samad Taylor added another single in the fourth, pushing win probability another 6.7 points San Diego's way as the Padres tacked on two more in each of the fourth and fifth innings and added solo runs in the seventh and eighth.

Merrill finished as the night's most impactful player, accounting for a cumulative 27.5 WPA and a 5.3 RE24, while Ty France contributed 10.5 WPA and 1.2 RE24. On the mound, Kyle Hart led all pitchers with a 20.4 WPA, the model's clearest signal of who controlled this game. Yuki Matsui and Wandy Peralta added modest contributions of 2.0 and 1.4 WPA respectively, as San Diego's pitching staff held Washington to two runs and preserved a comfortable wire-to-wire victory.