WASHINGTON — Rougned Odor is evidently the hero the Padres have been waiting for.
If May is too early to assess that he saved a season, then it can suffice that his three-run homer with two outs in the ninth inning Thursday saved the Padres from themselves.
They fell behind after a farcical first inning. They took the lead, they failed to add on, they added on. They gave up a four-run advantage. They failed some more.
And then Odor, filling in for the injured Manny Machado, had his third big hit in a week, a blast over the right field wall, and Josh Hader closed out an 8-6 victory, the Padres’ fifth win in 17 games.
The path to this one was circuitous, tense, at times silly and painful.
The Padres’ offense got started after an unfortunate incident.
Ha-Seong Kim was helped off the field by two athletic trainers after he fouled a ball off his left knee with two outs in the second inning.
Utility player Brandon Dixon entered the game with a 1-1 count, took a ball and then flared a single into shallow left field.
Trent Grisham followed by sending a 1-1 fastball the other way nad just over the left field wall to give the Padres a 2-1 lead.
They added three runs in the fifth inning on Fernando Tatis Jr.’s single, a one-out walk by Juan Soto, an RBI single by Xander Bogaerts and Odor’s two-run double with two outs.
But it became yet another day in which the Padres could not get all the facets of their team together, as two members of what has been the major leagues’ best bullpen this month didn’t record an out in the seventh inning until it was too late.
The Nationals scored a run on two singles and a double off Tim Hill before he was lifted for Nick Martinez, who entered with runners at second and third and the tying run at the plate.
Four singles and an error later, the Padres trailed.
Two of the singles were hard hits off infielders’ gloves, and Martinez helped a run home with a throwing error on a bunt single.
After Dixon led off the eighth inning with a double, Trent Grisham lined a bunt to third base and pinch-hitter Nelson Cruz and Tatis both struck out.
Jake Cronenworth and Soto led off the ninth with singles before Bogaerts and Carpenter struck out.
That set up Odor’s homer, who delivered the Padres’ third in four games.
But it can’t be all good news for the Padres these days.
They rarely hit well on the days they pitch well. They can’t get the top of the order to come through even when the bottom of the order produces. They haven’t won more than two games in a row in three weeks.
And Thursday was the second game the Padres have won in the past week-and-a-half in which they lost a significant player.
Machado suffered a fractured bone in his left hand when he was hit by a pitch on May 15 and hasn’t played since.
The status of Kim wasn’t immediately known, but he appeared to be in excruciating pain as he writhed on the ground in front of home plate for several minutes before he departed being supported on each side by athletic trainers Ben Fraser and Ricky Huerta.
Kim’s pain was literal. The hope is it is shorter-lived than then emotional torment Padres fans continue to be subjected to as they watch their team.
The Nationals took a 1-0 lead in a madcap manner.
Lane Thomas led off the bottom of the first inning with a 100.3 line drive to Kim at third base. Kim appeared to make the catch after diving to his left, but the ball fell to the dirt as Kim’s glove hit the ground. Kim immediately got up and threw to first base, which was uncovered, because Cronenworth thought Kim had caught the ball.
Thomas, who had not been running hard thinking he had lined out, was awarded second base when the ball sailed into a photo well.
Thomas went to third on a wild pitch and scored on a one-out single by Joey Meneses.
Arguably worse – and certainly typical in this season of offensive futility – the Padres appeared poised to immediately add on in the third inning before another prime opportunity turned into a major disappointment.
With rookie right-hander Jake Irvin throwing just two strikes while walking the first three batters he faced in the third, the Padres loaded the bases with no outs.
Irvin fell behind 3-0 to Bogaerts but then got the Padres’ struggling cleanup batter on a pop fly to second base before Carpenter grounded into an inning-ending double play on the first pitch he saw.
That left the Padres batting .184 (7-for-38) with the bases loaded this season. It also made them hitless in their previous 17 at-bats with runners in scoring position and with a .183 average with runners in scoring position this season. They would improve slightly with the pair of timely hits in the fifth.
