Hurst Makes His Case for Post-Season Award : Baseball: Pitcher keeps the Astros in check early. Fred McGriff hits two home runs to give the Padres a 6-5 victory.

In St. George, Utah, it didn’t really matter that Padre starter Bruce Hurst didn’t win his 15th game Monday. It hardly was significant that Hurst didn’t get the loss. The folks will be celebrating just the same.

Fred McGriff hit two home runs, including the game-winner in the seventh inning, as the Padres defeated the Houston Astros, 6-5, in front of 13,896 at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

It’s the first time the Padres (55-57) have won three consecutive games since June 22-24. They remain 7 1/2 games behind the division-leading Dodgers.

It also is their smallest deficit on this date since 1985, when they trailed the Dodgers by seven games. The Padres eventually finished 13 games out.

“There’s no one around town who doesn’t know when Bruce pitches,” said Ross Hurst, Bruce’s older brother and St. George resident. “It’s been unbelievable how many people have walked up to me, strangers even, and recited Bruce’s record.

“But everyone’s big concern now are the Padres. No one in town has given up on them for the playoffs. And if the Padres go to the playoffs, I think we all know what that means.”

The better the Padres perform, the longer they stay in the race. Everyone in St. George can tell you what the exposure will do for Hurst.

“I’m biased, of course,” Ross Hurst said, “but I don’t think there’s a better pitcher in the league right now. I think he should win the Cy Young Award. But the trouble is I don’t know if he’ll get enough exposure.

“You have (Tom) Glavine pitching for the Braves, and they’re on TV all night. You have Ramon Martinez, and with the Dodgers, they get all the exposure. But in San Diego, no on really knows about you.”

You don’t find Hurst on many ESPN highlights. However, he just might be the best-kept secret in baseball.

While he isn’t particularly dazzling with with his pitches, sending scouts scurrying for their speed guns, or filling up reporters’ notebooks with quotes, Hurst has emerged as one of the leading candidates for the Cy Young.

Although Hurst wasn’t the winner, the Padres once again came out on top with him on the mound. They now are 17-7 in games Hurst has started this season, and 38-50 without him.

Hurst, 14-5, who allowed five hits and four earned runs in 6 1/3 innings, will tell you that he’s had better years. He helped the Boston Red Sox to the American League pennant in 1986, but was overshadowed by Roger Clemens. He yielded a career-best 2.69 ERA in 1989 for the Padres, but the media focus was on Cy Young-winner Mark Davis, a reliever.

Now, perhaps for the first time, Hurst has become the center of attention on his team.

Said Ross Hurst: “To say that all of a sudden, ‘Here’s a bright star,’ people haven’t been looking at the galaxy, because has been shining brightly all along.”

Hurst, for the 24th time this season, pitched at least six innings. But for only the third time in his past 16 starts, he allowed more than three earned runs.

The Astros, who did not have a hit in the first four innings, ruined Hurst’s bid to become the National League’s first 15-game winner. They scored their first run in the fifth inning on a double by Mark Davidson. The Padres figured they put the game away in the bottom of the fifth when they scored two runs on a bases-loaded single by Benito Santiago, opening up a 5-1 lead.

Uh-uh.

The Astros, who have lost six consecutive games, kept coming back. They scored a run in the sixth inning on third baseman Jack Howell’s throwing error, allowing Gerald Young to score from second base.

And then along came the peculiar seventh inning.

Hurst found himself in a jam early when he walked leadoff hitter Mike Simms. Before long, the bases were loaded and there was only one out.

He then got Casey Candaele to hit a high bouncer. Yet, in his aggressiveness, he jumped up and deflected the ball instead of letting shortstop Tony Fernandez handle it. The ball caromed off his glove, and everyone was safe, trimming the Padres’ lead to 5-3, and leaving the bases loaded.

Padre Manager Greg Riddoch, deciding that Hurst had enough, called upon right-handed reliever Jose Melendez. Hurst immediately walked off the mound, grabbed his jacket on the bench, and headed into the clubhouse.

It’s unknown how he reacted once in the clubhouse, but it hardly could have been soothing to listen to Melendez balk in one run, and give up another on a sacrifice fly by Luis Gonzalez.

While the Astros might have taken away Hurst’s victory, they quickly gave away the lead when McGriff led off the seventh with a homer off Astro reliever Mike Capel. It was McGriff’s second homer of the night, marking the 14th time in his career that he has hit two homers in a game.

“When I see the ball, like I did tonight,” McGriff said, “good things are going to happen.”

Padre reliever Larry Andersen shut down his former teammates for the next 1 2/3 innings, and after giving up a two-out single to Jose Tolentino, Craig Lefferts closed the door by retiring Casey Candaele.

“It’s not unrealistic for us to make a run at the pennant,” Riddoch said. “Others have given up on us, but we haven’t given up on ourselves. If we had, you’d have seen a whole different team start the second half of the season. A lot can happen in 50 games, look at the Giants.”

Said Padre right fielder Tony Gwynn, who hit a two-run double in the third inning when Davidson crashed into the left-field fence: “We seem to play better with added pressure. At 7 1/2 back, we’re not out of it, we’re not in it. We’re kind of in limbo. Even there, we’re in the hunt.”