SAN DIEGO — The Padres know they have been playing better in most games while falling further behind in the standings.
And they know the last part of that sentence is all that matters in the end, which is closing in fast.
“We have to finish those games off,” manager Bob Melvin said Monday afternoon. “It’s what we have to do. So it’s a little bit better than what we’ve seen, but we’re not looking for silver linings at this point. We’re looking to win games.”
It wasn’t a comeback they had to forge Monday against the Angels. There was no late collapse.
They did not allow it.
They merely had to sweat out a few innings by a flagging bullpen before pulling away for a 10-3 victory.
Xander Bogaerts gave the Padres an early advantage, and Blake Snell preserved it for five innings before the bullpen started making it interesting in the sixth.
The rest of the offense took over from there, doing more than enough to make sure another lead would not slip away entirely and further deteriorate the Padres’ shaky footing in a season threatening to fall off a cliff.
The leaking bullpen, complicit in five of the Padres’ previous 10 losses, remains more than a little disconcerting. The Padres lost five of six on last week’s trip to Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. In four of those losses, they lost a lead. In two of them, they led 3-0 early.
Bogaerts’ three-run homer in the first inning put the Padres up 3-0, and the lead was 4-0 when Bogaerts doubled and scored on Jake Cronenworth’s single in the fourth.
After failing to convert repeated opportunities against Snell, the Angels scored twice in the sixth inning off Domingo Tapia and Tom Cosgrove.
After the Padres scored two runs — on a walk by Juan Soto, consecutive singles by Fernando Tatis Jr, Manny Machado and Bogaerts and a sacrifice fly by Cronenworth — Tim Hill surrendered a home run to Luis Rengifo in the seventh.
Nick Martinez took over for Hill with a runner on first and two outs, ended the seventh and worked a scoreless eighth. Josh Hader allowed a single and walked a batter, but got a double-play grounder between those and ended the game with a strikeout.
The Padres’ closer was protecting a seven-run lead after Tatis drove in two runs with a triple in the seventh and another run with a single in the eighth.
Snell, named Monday as the National League Pitcher of the Month for June, wasn’t quite as dominant as he had been — until he had to be.
The left-hander was unable to get past the fifth inning for the first time in seven starts, having thrown 100 pitches (and just 55 strikes). But he did not allow a run and has a 0.77 ERA over his past eight starts dating to May 25.
The Angels had a runner in scoring position in every one of Snell’s innings. That included having a runner at second with no outs in the first, at first and third with no outs in the second, at first and second with no outs in the fourth and having the bases loaded with one out in the fifth.
A leadoff double by Taylor Ward and one-out walk were negated by a strikeout of Mike Trout and a double play grounder by Anthony Rendon. In the second inning, singles by Hunter Renfroe and Eduardo Escobar gave the Angels runners at the corners with no outs before two strikeouts and a line drive caught by second baseman Ha-Seong Kim ended the inning.
In the third, Trout walked with one out before Shohei Ohtani grounded into a fielder’s choice and Rendon singled and Renfroe struck out.
Singles by Escobar and Rengifo started the fourth before Chad Wallach struck out and David Fletcher grounded a ball to Machado, who stepped on third base and threw across the diamond to end the inning.
Ward made an out on a soft grounder in front of the plate to start the fifth before Trout singled and Snell walked Ohtani and Rendon on a total of nine pitches to load the bases with one out. He got Renfroe looking for the Angels’ seventh strikeout of the night and escaped again on a soft bouncer to Machado, who stepped on third.
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