DENVER — The Padres said this series was going to be different.
They have two more chances to make it so and to maintain their advantage in the race for one of the final two National League playoff spots.
But Friday was more of the same for them at Coors Field, where they pitch just poorly enough and hit as if most of them are swinging bats made of Al dente spaghetti noodles.
The Rockies beat them 4-3 on Alan Trejo’s walk-off single in the 10th inning.
It was the Padres’ seventh loss in eight games here this season.
With that result, the Phillies retook possession of the NL’s fifth playoff spot by beating the Braves, and the Brewers beat the Reds to move to within two games of the Padres in the race for the last NL postseason berth.
Juan Soto’s 440-foot home run to straightaway center field in the eighth inning had tied the game 3-3, but the Padres had just two baserunners in the four innings before that and none afterward.
Robert Suarez pitched a scoreless eighth before issuing two walks and getting one out in the ninth. Josh Hader struck out Ryan McMahon and got Elias Diaz on a groundout.
Adrian Morejón came on to start the 10th with Diaz on second base. After Michael Toglia grounded out, the Padres intentionally walked Charlie Blackmon before Trejo lined a single to left field to easily score Diaz.
The Padres managed two runs in five innings against Rockies starting pitcher Ryan Feltner, who had allowed at least three runs in each of his previous five starts and entered Friday with a 6.05 ERA.
Padres starter Sean Manaea escaped trouble in the first two innings. But after the Padres took a 2-0 lead in the top of the third, Randal Grichuk hit the first pitch in the bottom of the third to the left-field bleachers.
Manaea got the first two outs in the fourth in short order before a single, a walk and a triple gave the Rockies a 3-2 lead.
The Rockies’ starting lineup Friday was even more anonymous than the NL West’s cellar dweller usually runs out. What the Rockies did do was start four rookies and five players in all that had played no more than 55 big league games.
But the game was at Coors Field, and the Padres arrived having lost 13 of their previous 14 games in the freakishly large ballpark in the city that is a mile above the sea.
From the first flared single into shallow center field on the second pitch Manaea threw, it appeared this might be another one of those nights for the Padres.
The Rockies loaded the bases on two singles and a walk before Manaea got an out. Then the left-hander got three outs in five pitches, on a shallow fly ball to right field and a double play grounder.
A walk by Trejo and single by No. 8 hitter Ezekiel Tovar on the first pitch he saw in the major leagues gave the Rockies runners at first and second with one out in the second inning. Manaea escaped again, on a fly ball to center field and a grounder to the left side that Manny Machado grabbed, spun and threw to first for the out.
A one-out single by José Azocar was followed by Jurickson Profar’s single that moved Azocar to third. Soto then grounded the 10th pitch of his at-bat to the right side, where second baseman Trejo fielded it and had to settle for the out at first base because Profar had been running on the pitch. Azocar scored on the grounder, and Profar scored from second when Machado followed with a single.
Manaea retired the next five batters after Grichuk’s homer.
But Tovar again singled on the first pitch he saw in the bottom of the fourth, and Manaea walked Sean Bouchard before both runners scored on Yonathan Daza’s triple to the wall in center field, which also ended Manaea’s night.
This is not what the Padres envisioned after winning five of six their previous six games.
“We just feel good as a team right now, and it’s a little different environment for us, in that every game feels like the last game,” manager Bob Melvin said Thursday, shortly before the Padres boarded their flight to Denver. “So I don’t think you go in thinking about what happened earlier in the season or what the track record is in any particular place.”
Whatever challenges presented by playing at Coors Field, they felt the urgency of their situation would overcome.
“We need it,” Profar said Thursday. “Sometimes you get over there in Colorado, it can be tough. It doesn’t matter now. … This is gonna be different. We are in different place. It’s a different stage of the season. And we are playing way better baseball.
