CINCINNATI — There is the way to score runs the Padres normally have had to resort to.

It is what they do when they are at their best. But it requires a lot of things to go right practically in succession time after time.

An example of how difficult that is unfolded in the first half of Saturday’s game. They actually worked their style of offense pretty well. They had long at-bats, a good number of hits, walked a couple times. They failed to score.

And then there is the way the Padres built their 6-4 victory over the Reds on Saturday — on home runs by Luis Arraez, Jake Cronenworth and Gavin Sheets.

“Yeah,” Cronenworth said, ” this is quicker.”

The Padres, even with an offense that ranked 29th in the major leagues with a .643 OPS over the 39 games leading into Saturday, have won a lot. Saturday’s victory moved them back to eight games above .500, at 45-37.

But they had never won like this in 2025.

They drove in all their runs with home runs, their first time doing so this season in a game in which they scored more than two runs.

The Padres came back on blasts to right field that were of increasing magnitude and distances — a solo homer by Arraez that traveled a project 402 feet in the fifth inning to get the Padres to 3-1, a two-run homer that Cronenworth sent 403 feet in the sixth to get them to 4-3 and a three-run homer Sheets launched 422 feet in the seventh to provide the final margin.

The Padres entered the day having gotten the fewest portion of their runs via homers (28.5%) in the major leagues this season, and their 69 home runs were fewer than all but three teams.

“It changes the game fast,” Cronenworth said.

Saturday was actually a representation of the kind of balance almost any offense would strive for.

The  Padres harassed a good starting pitcher enough that he was gone after five innings. Then they did damage against a vulnerable bullpen.

They had almost as many hits Saturday against Andrew Abbott as they had against him in his previous two starts against them, and they got rid of him two innings earlier than they had in either prior game.

The left-hander had allowed one run on eight hits in 14⅔ innings in those two starts, one in 2023 and one in ‘24.

Abbott, who entered Saturday’s game with a 1.79 ERA in 13 starts, left after five innings with the Reds up 3-1 on Saturday.

The only one of the Padres’ seven hits that cost him a run was Arraez’s homer.

Abbott stranded Sheets at second after his one-out double in the second inning. He left the bases loaded after the Padres got them that way with one out in the fourth. He also escaped without further damage in the fifth after Jackson Merrill and Fernando Tatis Jr. singled with one out.

The Reds teed off from the start on pitches Randy Vásquez left mostly up and too far inside the strike zone. Arguably, he was lucky they just kept grounding singles through the infield and occasionally lining them over the infield.

Every time you looked up, there were Reds on base. Reds on the corners with fewer than two outs.

Two innings in, Vásquez had allowed seven hits, as many as he had in a game this season.

Three of those led to runs.

The Reds also answered Arraez’s homer in the bottom of the fifth with a run that was charged to Vásquez.

Bryan Hoeing, who replaced  Vasquez with runners on second and third and one out in the fifth and yielded a sacrifice fly, followed with a scoreless sixth and was credited with the win. Adrián Morejón glided through a perfect seventh and Jason Adam a perfect eighth. Closer Robert Suarez issued a one-out walk and two-out walk before earning his MLB-leading 23rd save by striking out Spencer Steer, who hit three home runs in the Reds’ 8-1 victory on Friday.

It was the Padres leaving the yard three times Saturday.

They got to 4-3 when Jose Iglesias led off the sixth with a single and Cronenworth belted his homer 20 rows deep.

They took the lead in the seventh when Merrill led off with a double, Xander Bogaerts worked back from 0-2 to draw a one-out walk and Sheets sent a changeup at the bottom of the zone from Lyon Richardson over the wall in right-center field.

“Homers are great, obviously, but they’re extremely hard to do,” Sheets said. “And so, obviously, we had a bunch of timely hitting today. It’s a good ballpark to hit in. The ball flies here. Just not trying to do too much and have good at-bats. And we were able to hit a bunch out of the ballpark today, which has been new for us, and that’s something we fed off of. But more importantly, just big at-bats today, all up and down.”