It seems the Padres' penchant for living a baseball life with win-loss margins as thin as Rodeo Drive packing tissue owns a fresh and fitting color.
Blood red.
As catcher Jorge Alfaro stood at his clubhouse locker after a 4-2, 10-inning win Sunday over the Pirates at Petco Park, one side of his uniform pants shared the story of his dive into home plate that cut down the potential lead run in extra innings.
Alfaro then showed the bottom of his left forearm, raked raw. Worth the pain?
"Hell, yeah," Alfaro said with a smile. "We won the game."
Alfaro's airborne theater was just one of three plays that underscored how tight outcomes have become for the Padres. There's almost always phenomenal starting pitching. There's routinely doubts about whether it will be flushed because of inconsistent offense.
For another day, the Padres managed to survive.
When you wonder how long the team that hit 30 victories can keep up the tightwire act, they find a way to rip deflation from the flames. It's no way to live as a long season grinds forward, but it's better than the alternative.
"No doubt," manager Bob Melvin said. "We're hardened, as far as playing these games. We talked about at the beginning of the season that we might see quite a few games like this, and we have. We've won most of them. We've lost our share, but we've been able to respond.
"I think that makes you a little bit tougher as the season goes along, know that you can win games like this. … We think better things are coming. But in the meantime, we're toughening our skin a little bit."
The outcome-shaping moments began in the fifth, when Jurickson Profar lifted a two-out ball toward right. This season, the flight of baseballs remain inconsistent and plenty that sound like homers at the crack die harmlessly along warning tracks.
Profar's ball, in a scoreless game, hit on top of the fence and hopped over.
A homer, though barley.
"That's baseball," Profar said. "That can happen every night. The most important thing is the W at the end."
Then came Alfaro's critical play in the top of the 10th. Former Padres outfielder Tucupita Marcano sacrificed extra-innings runner Hoy Park to third. An out later, a 98-mph rocket from Luis Garcia found the dirt.
The ball caromed perfectly off the backstop, allowing Alfaro to recover it, spin and outrun Park on a dive at the plate. That squelched the half inning, fired a lightning bolt through Petco and added a splash of color to Alfaro's pants.
"We always go out there and play hard," said Alfaro, who also banked a pair of singles. "You can see it. Every inning, every out, every pitch. We just go out and compete. You can see how we play the game."
The third and final moment of square dancing along the rooftop's edge arrived when Trent Grisham, 0-for-2 and hitting .161 while struggling to start the season, turned on a 2-0 fastball that made a fair-or-foul flight toward right field.
The ball bounced off the foul pole. Grisham stood there, shrugging as if he could not believe it. Even though believing, it seems, is at the root of these sorts of things.
"Believing is a big part of it, being in those close games," Grisham said. "… We believe we're in every game and we've got the guys to produce. So, stay in it. Stay in the fight."
The Padres still need to trade for a sturdy and dependable bat to avoid wasting their stellar starting pitching and allow the season to find its true wings. The seven innings of two-hit, nine-strikeout, three-walk, scoreless ball from MacKenzie Gore pushed the team's total of six-inning starts to a baseball-best 27.
That, though, became another thought for another day as everyone marveled at the great escape artists.
"At some point," Melvin said while walking a hallway to the clubhouse, "this will pay off for us."
This starting pitching, defense and baserunning — no matter how special, how bankable, how postseason poised — cannot survive the lack of production currently choking the lineup in the grand scheme.
Other than Eric Hosmer, the rest of the Padres' lineup against the sub-.500 Pirates entered the game hitting a combined .201. For another lap, though, it's as if the fire walkers simply laced up those handy flame-resistant Nikes.
Melvin chose to point out the beauty in offensive numbers that would never be awarded a sash or tiara.
"Pro's been sneaky good," Melvin said of Profar. "His average doesn't look great, but recently he's been on base. He's gotten big hits. He's made great plays in the outfield. But his at-bats, I don't think his stat line is kind of indicative of what he's meant at the plate for us. Early in the season, with power. Later here more with getting on base.
"He understands what's expected of him on a particular day in whatever role or spot in the lineup he is. You know (Jake Cronenworth's) going to hit at some point in time here."
That's no long-term plan, but it's hard to blame Melvin for mining optimism when wins keep piling up and another series lands on the happy side of the ledger.
Three plays that could have gone the other way, with any one of those flipping the outcome, kept the roller-coaster ride a smile-fest.
For now, color all that dread red.
