Padres 5, Rockies 0: You’re welcome, Brewers.

The Brewers really need to send Jhoulys Chacin a gift basket, because his dominant outing against the Rockies have narrowed the gap in the National League wild card race to just one game. Chacin utterly flummoxed the Colorado lineup, giving up just one hit in six scoreless innings of work. Meanwhile, the Padres chased Chad Bettis from the game in under five innings.

Bettis wasn’t great for the first four innings, but he was going frame-to-scoreless-frame against Chacin. In the fifth, he made one too many mistakes. Manuel Margot led off with a single and moved into scoring position on a ground out. Margot got greedy when he tried and failed to steal third, which should have made Bettis feel comfortable enough to settle down. Instead, he walked Wil Myers on five pitches and issued a wild pitch to Yangervis Solarte to put Wil on second. Solarte didn’t waste any time, hitting a single to center to plate the only run that mattered. Bud Black went to his bullpen after that, which got him out of the fifth, but didn’t do much good the rest of the evening.

Cory Spangenberg singled off Kyle Freeland to start the sixth, and Austin Hedges put him ninety feet from home with a double to right. Christian Villanueva continued his hot start by hitting a chopper back to Freeland that turned into a RBI single. And if the Rockies weren’t feeling awful after that, they were after the Pads hung a crooked number in the eighth.

Spangy led off with a double, and Hedges followed with a single to put runners on the corners with nobody out. The dreamboat stole second to take the double play off the table, and then Chris Rusin beaned Travis Jankowski to load the bases. Erick Aybar grounded out to first, which should have been an easy double play for Ian Desmond, but Colorado’s big offseason acquisition completely airmailed the throw home, allowing two runs to score. Margot hit a sac fly to keep the run party going and put the Friars up 5-0. Brad Hand made things sort of vaguely interesting in the ninth when he gave up a pair of singles, but he recovered to hold the shutout.

The Padres will wrap up the series in the final home game of 2017 tomorrow at 1:40 PM. Luis Perdomo will have first pitch.