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San Diego Padres star Manny Machado is looking more like his old self with each passing week.

Machado is 5-for-13 with two doubles, two homers, five RBIs and four runs in the first three games of the Padres’ four-game series against the host St. Louis Cardinals that concludes Thursday afternoon.

San Diego won 7-4 on Monday and 7-5 on Tuesday before the Cardinals rallied for a 4-3 victory on Wednesday.

After recovering from offseason elbow surgery, Machado has gotten stronger as the season has progressed. The third baseman is batting .301 in August with nine doubles, six homers, 21 RBIs and a .947 OPS.

“My body’s just feeling better,” Machado said. “Every day it continues to get better. I guess I like the heat a little bit, too.”

He is helping set the tone for an offense that has had to overcome the absence of injured hitters Fernando Tatis Jr. and Ha-Seong Kim. San Diego applied constant pressure during the first two games of the current series.

“This team’s a grinding team,” Machado said. “We don’t strike out much. We put the ball in play. We’re aggressive when we need to be aggressive, but you can’t throw it down the zone because we could do some damage on it, too.”

Paul Goldschmidt has heated up for the Cardinals in the series, going 7-for-11 (.636) with a homer and four RBIs.

“He’s looking better with each at-bat,” St. Louis manager Oliver Marmol said. “That’s encouraging.”

Nolan Arenado went 2-for-5 on Wednesday and drove in the winning run with a two-out single in the ninth inning.

The Padres will close the series with Michael King (11-7, 3.14 ERA) drawing the start. He took a 7-1 loss to the New York Mets on Saturday when he allowed three hits and five runs, but only one earned, in five innings. King struck out seven and walked three.

In his only previous appearance against the Cardinals, King threw 3 1/3 scoreless innings of relief and earned a win last season with the New York Yankees.

The Cardinals will counter with Sonny Gray (11-9, 4.07 ERA), who will try to rebound from a 6-0 loss to the Minnesota Twins on Saturday. Gray allowed five runs on seven hits, including two homers, in six innings. He struck out seven and walked two.

“The frustrating thing for me is it just seems to be the same game over and over and over,” said Gray, who has lost three consecutive starts. “Put up some zeros and then have the big innings. Give up three or four — two, three, four in one inning and then throw the ball well after that. It’s just zero, zero, zero, five, zero, zero. That’s the frustrating part.”

After allowing only eight homers in 184 innings in 2023, Gray has served up 20 in 141 2/3 innings this season. He has given up five or more earned runs seven times.

Gray was on the 15-day injured list when the Cardinals faced the Padres in early April. He is 2-0 with a 1.64 ERA in two career starts against San Diego.

–Field Level Media