SAN DIEGO — Sean Manaea has been a good pitcher for the Padres.
He also has been a bad pitcher for the Padres.
Monday against the Mariners, the soft-throwing left-hander was the latter.
He was hit hard and hit often in a short outing, putting the punchless Padres in a hole they didn’t come close to climbing out of en route to an 8-2 loss at Petco Park.
Manaea departed with one out and the bases loaded in the fourth inning having allowed two runs in the first and two in the fourth.
Tayler Scott, in his Padres debut and first major league game since 2019, ended that inning without further damage and struck out the side in the fifth before giving up three runs (two earned) in the sixth. The Mariners added an unearned run in the eighth inning.
The Padres did about the opposite against the Mariners’ Scott Flexen, who put together 6 2/3 scoreless innings before three relievers completed the task.
Trent Grisham’s two-run homer against Tommy Million in the ninth kept the Padres from suffering their fourth shutout of the season.
Manaea was acquired in a trade with the Oakland A’s four days before the season. His arrival created a depth to the Padres’ starting rotation that is envious and has been highly effective.
The left-hander is a significant reason the Padres have among the sturdiest starting rotations in the major leagues. Entering Monday’s game, he was one of 17 pitchers in the National League to have an ERA under 3.81 and have thrown at least 85 innings. His 11 quality starts, including five among the previous six times he had taken the mound, are tied for fifth in the NL.
He also has the propensity to get blown up.
Monday was the third time this season Manaea (3-4, 4.18) has recorded 13 or fewer outs and allowed four or more runs. The rest of the Padres starters have had six such games — two by MacKenzie Gore and one apiece by Yu Darvish, Nick Martinez, Blake Snell and Ryan Weathers.
The Mariners missed on just four of their 26 swings against Manaea. And when they connected, it wasn’t subtle.
Of the 15 balls they put in play against him, all but two had an exit velocity of 95 mph or higher. Among those were Carlos Santana’s 103.5 mph line drive off Manaea’s left calf in the third inning and Julio Rodriguez’s fourth-inning home run to the third deck of the Western Metal Building at 108.3 mph.
It was the 12th homer allowed by Manaea, most on the team.
The Padres have scored in six of 45 innings in their past five games. They’ve totaled nine runs and are batting .217 (36-for-166) in that span.
In the previous four games, they were facing the Dodgers, whose starting pitchers have the lowest ERA in the majors and whose bullpen has the seventh-lowest ERA in the majors.
Flexen came into Monday with a 4.32 ERA, which ranked 55th among qualifying starters. Just four pitchers had yielded a higher batting average than the .274 opponents were hitting against Flexen. Batters were reaching base at a .333 clip against Just seven starters had allowed a higher on-base percentage than the .333 Flexen was allowing.
Manny Machado’s walk and Jake Cronenworth’s single, in succession with one out in the fourth inning, gave the Padres their first two baserunners. Machado and Cronenworth were stranded when Luke Voit and Eric Hosmer struck out.
Flexen, whose 6.3 strikeouts per nine innings ranked 60th, struck out the first two batters of the fifth inning and finished with eight.
Ha-Seong Kim’s single with two outs in the fifth, CJ Abrams’ pinch-hit single in the sixth and Jorge Alfaro’s infield single in the seventh were the only other hits off Flexen.
He was removed after walking Kim in the sixth. Reliever Erik Swanson walked Trent Grisham to load the bases with two outs before getting Jurickson Profar on a pop-up.
