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SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Mike Piazza homered, Cla Meredith extended his scoreless streak to 27 1-3 innings and the San Diego Padres beat the Colorado Rockies 5-4 Tuesday night to pull within one game of the NL West lead.

With his 417th career homer, Piazza reached the 20-home run mark for the 12th time in 15 major league seasons.

San Diego closed within one game of division-leading Los Angeles and opened a two-game lead in the wild-card race over Philadelphia, which was rained out. Florida dropped three games back.

Meredith (4-1) pitched two scoreless innings and is one short of San Diego's club record, set by Mark Davis in 1988. Meredith, a sidearming righty, has not surrendered a run in his last 24 appearances.

Manny Alexander had two RBI for San Diego, including a run-scoring triple in the sixth that put the Padres ahead 4-3. Alexander, who also had a sacrifice fly, then scored on a single by Adrian Gonzalez.

Pinch-hitter Vinny Castilla, who began the season as the Padres' third baseman, had a run-scoring single in the eighth against Scott Linebrink to cut San Diego's lead to one run.

Trevor Hoffman pitched a perfect the ninth for his 37th save in 41 chances. With 473 in his career, he is five shy of matching Lee Smith's record.

Jeff Francis (11-11) gave up five runs on 10 hits in five-plus innings as the Rockies lost for the 11th time in their last 12 road games and dropped to 6-22 on the road since the All-Star break.

Padres starter Chris Young allowed three runs and six hits in five-plus innings with eight strikeouts.

Garrett Atkins tied the score at 2 with a two-run homer in the third. Brian Giles scored on Ben Johnson's infield out in the fifth to give the Padres a 3-2 lead, but Colorado tied it in the sixth on Yorvit Torrealba's leadoff homer.

Game notes

The Rockies have hit seven homers in their last three games after homering just five times in the previous 10 games. ... Piazza established the major-league record for catchers by hitting 20 or more homers in 10 consecutive seasons (1993-2002).