Padres 8, Diamondbacks 7: Loki, Norse god of mischief, has possessed the Padres

I’m not a religious man. I never have been. But after watching what the Padres have done to their division rivals in the last week, I’ve decided to worship the Norse god Loki. Why? Well, it should be obvious. The Friars started the Dodgers on what is now a nine-game slide when they took three from them last weekend. Last night, they snapped Arizona’s thirteen-game winning streak. Tonight? Tonight the God of Mischief came to the Friars in the ninth inning and helped them put up a half-dozen runs to come back from a five-run deficit. Loki has made the Pads his tool to screw with the Diamondbacks, having already gleefully cursed the Dodgers.

And of course, it had to be Loki, and not some other deity. A vain god wouldn’t have stood for four and a half innings of scoreless baseball. The Son of Laufey, however, would relish the tension. And he’d love giving the D-Backs four runs in the fifth off a string of singles, knowing they were going to lose it all later. There’s nothing more hilarious than tearing down a smug jerk, so he’d toss Daniel Descalso a homer in the sixth and give Chris Iannetta a RBI single to make Arizona feel unstoppable.

But the seventh is when the mischief really got started. Loki’s a shapeshifter, so he probably took the form of a baseball bat to help Wil Myers crush this monster.

That wasn’t enough to faze the snakes, but it might have put the germ of panic in the back of their heads. But Loki got his message across by having Wil do the exact same thing to start the ninth inning. For the poetry of it, he had our old friend Fernando Rodney come in and fall completely apart. Jabari Blash walked, and then Loki got Rodney to toss a wild pitch. Austin Hedges drove him in with a divine double, and Erick Aybar and Manuel Margot piled on with back-to-back singles. Carlos Asuaje drove in the tying run, but the mischief maker brought home Margot on an error by David Peralta.

The mischief continues tomorrow at 1:10 PM, with Luis Perdomo taking on Robbie Ray.