SAN DIEGO — In the span of a few months, Tyler Wells’ life was turned upside down — for good and bad.

In January 2024, Wells and his wife, Melissa, got married. Three months later, he suffered an injury that required surgery and ended his season. A few months after that, he and his wife learned they were pregnant with their first child.

Tuesday, with his wife and 5-month-old daughter, Ava, in attendance, Wells returned to a major league mound for the first time in 508 days and led the Orioles to a 6-2 win over the Padres. The 31-year-old dad tossed five innings of two-run ball, outpitching Yu Darvish and putting Baltimore in position to sweep the Padres on Wednesday.

“I’m just super excited and thankful,” Wells said Monday before his season debut. “During this whole process, with her being born and obviously the relationship that me and my wife have continued to grow, I think it’s just a testament to not just the work that I was able to put in in the training room and on the field, but also away from the game. It just makes it that much more special.”

In the fifth inning, as Wells likely approached his pitch limit, he engaged in a lengthy battle with contact hitter Luis Arraez, who homered off him earlier in the game. On the seventh pitch, Wells got Arraez to softly fly out to center field, and the 6-foot-8 right-hander showed the most emotion he had all night, smacking his glove and kicking his leg in excitement.

During his 14-month recovery from surgery to repair a torn ligament in his elbow, Wells tried to focus on his mundane tasks each day. Band work. Cardio. Light throwing. But thoughts of his return to the mound — the heart of the baseball diamond, standing 10 inches above everyone else, the protagonist of the game — would creep in, especially at night before bed.

“It was a lot of learning, a lot of adapting, a lot of growing,” Wells said Monday of his recovery. “It’s going to make me a better player, a better teammate and a better pitcher, but most importantly, a better husband and dad.”

The Orioles, who won the series opener, 4-3, took an early lead Tuesday on upstart Jeremiah Jackson’s solo homer off an 0-2 sweeper from Darvish. Third baseman Emmanuel Rivera then drove in the next four runs on a pair of two-run singles — one in the third and another in the fifth. Jackson then put Baltimore (63-76) up 6-2 in the eighth with an RBI groundout.

For the second straight night, the Orioles’ makeshift bullpen was nails. Shawn Dubin, Kade Strowd, Rico Garcia and Albert Suárez combined to toss four scoreless frames. Strowd got into trouble in the seventh by walking three of the first four batters he faced, but Garcia performed an encore of his impressive outing at Fenway Park last month by escaping another bases-loaded jam. Suárez, who came off the injured list Monday, looked like himself across two clean innings after he missed the past five months with a shoulder injury.

Wells looked much like the pitcher he was in 2023 when he was an integral part of an Orioles rotation that led them to 101 wins and an American League East title. He was pounding the strike zone without allowing a walk and striking out four. He mixed his fastball at the top of the zone with his cutter on the corners of it and his changeup at the bottom. As a homer-prone pitcher, he gave up his obligatory home run, a two-run shot by Arraez.

To pitch that way in his first game back from surgery is an impressive feat. But what meant the most to Wells was pitching in front of his daughter.

Ava won’t remember this night. Tyler will never forget it.

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