The Padres scored more runs than they had been scoring. Randy Vásquez was better than he was six days earlier. Fernando Tatis Jr. provided a reminder that it is perilous to test his arm.
That is pretty much what even the most positive observer would be reduced to leaning on as the Padres’ limped forward on their longest losing streak of the season.
A 4-2 loss to the Rays on Sunday also completed the first sweep of the Padres in 2025.
If this was one of those rebuilding years, which is what one might think seeing the minor leaguers and journeymen filling out a good portion of the Padres’ starting lineups the past couple weeks, the focus could be on incremental improvement.
Because this season is about making the playoffs, the question after four consecutive losses and seven losses in nine games is just how bad it will get before the Padres (17-11) get healthy.
“There’s so much talent in this room, and we’ve all been in this game long enough that we know rough patches are gonna happen at some point in the year,” super utility man turned starting center fielder Tyler Wade said. “You’re not gonna play perfect baseball for 162 games. So it’s just about weathering the storm, getting back after it the next day.”
That does bring up one more positive.
The Padres do not play Monday, which means one less game missed by their injured players.
Three of the team’s six core players are on the injured list, and the patchwork lineup those injuries have forced the Padres to field has been a shadow of what the team was over the season’s first three weeks.
The Padres fell to 9-9 without center fielder Jackson Merrill (hamstring strain, expected back as soon as Friday), 8-8 without second baseman Jake Cronenworth (rib fracture, potential return the second week of May) and 1-5 without first baseman Luis Arraez (concussion, expected back Tuesday).
“We don’t make excuses on this team,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said. “We the guys that are hurt, and we find a way to win baseball games. If you look back to the beginning of last year, look at our record relative to the rest of the league, including this year, I think you’d be pretty pleased. We’ve been able to do that, regardless of circumstance, and we’ll continue to do that.”
It is true that the Padres have the second-best record in the major leagues since the start of 2024 and are tied for the fifth-best record this season.
Still, the reality is that their two runs Sunday were twice as many as they had in their three previous games combined, and they have dropped from tops in the major leagues in batting average to fifth by hitting .162 over the past four games.
“Not surprised at all,” said Tatis, one of the few Padres to continue hitting regularly. “This is the big leagues, and this is one of the hardest games to ever be out there. So like I said, we just need to figure it out, clean the small details and keep moving forward. … We already showed what we’re capable of, and we have been able to play one of the highest IQ games. We just (haven’t) performed. So it’s a matter of getting back to that and staying consistent.”
The Padres went up 1-0 in the second inning Sunday, their first lead since being ahead 2-0 at the end of Tuesday’s game in Detroit.
They had trailed at the end of 21 of the 29 innings they had played in that span. They would trail again after the top of the third before tying the game in the bottom of the third and falling behind for good in the fifth inning.
Tatis’ 96 mph throw from right field — after barely planting himself as he stopped traveling backward — to get Danny Jansen trying to score on a fly ball ended the top of the seventh inning and kept the Padres within a run.
They got the potential tying run to second base with one out in the bottom half of the inning when Connor Joe drew a walk and was bunted over by Jose Iglesias, but successive strikeouts ended what would be their final threat.
He ended up retiring more batters in succession at the start of Sunday’s game than he retired in total six days earlier, when he was charged with six runs in two-plus innings.
He was staked to a 1-0 lead Sunday when Xander Bogaerts led off the third inning with a single, moved to second on Oscar Gonzalez’s single, to third on a double-play grounder by Tirso Ornelas and scored on Iglesias’ single.
Then Vásquez ran into a new issue.
With one out in the third inning, he yielded his first home run of the season, a floater to the deck beyond the right field wall by Taylor Walls, who was batting .159 and had not had an extra-base hit in his 63 at-bats this season.
Vásquez retired the next batter, but a walk to speedy lead-off hitter Chandler Simpson ended up costing him when Simpson stole second base and scored on Brandon Lowe’s single.
The Padres tied the game in the third on successive one-out singles by Tatis and Gavin Sheets and Manny Machado’s sacrifice fly.
Vásquez got two outs to start the fifth, but Simpson was able to get a ground ball into left field off the glove of a diving Machado. Simpson then went to third on a single by Lowe and scored on a wild pitch, a fastball low and away that skipped past catcher Martín Maldonado’s glove.
A walk to Yandy Díaz finished Vásquez’s day, and the Padres’ four highest-leverage relievers (Adrián Morejón, Jeremiah Estrada, Jason Adam and Robert Suarez) finished the game as the Padres chased the elusive victory.
The Rays’ final run came in the ninth against Suarez on Travis Jankowski’s lead-off double and a two-out single by Simpson.
As the Rays were adding on to seal a victory in a way the Padres did regularly early in the season, Sunday was just the third time in ‘25 the Padres went down in order over the final two innings of a game.
It was the 12th time they have scored two or fewer runs, the 11th time in 18 games without Merrill. It was their seventh time getting five or fewer hits, with five of those coming in the past 11 games.
They came home after a 6-0 loss in Detroit on Wednesday and scored three runs in 27 innings against a Rays team that with its three victories at Petco Park for to .500 (14-14) on the season.
“Listen, it’s a good ball club,” Shildt said. “They had good pitching. … The sky is not falling. It’s never as bad as it appears. It may feel that way. I can tell you in this clubhouse, there’s a difference between disappointment and like, ‘Oh no.’ We’re disappointed. But I can tell you this with complete confidence: we’re just fine. And this is part of the 162-game stretch. Things happen. Things won’t go our way. We keep our head up and move forward and we’ll be ready for Tuesday (and the start of a two-game series against the Giants). We promise you that.”
