SAN DIEGO — Six games. Just six games left.
For the few yellow and even red flags that have popped up early in the most-anticipated season in franchise history, the silver lining in a 4-3 loss to Milwaukee in 10 innings on Thursday, even after Trent Grisham’s game-tying homer in the eighth, is Fernando Tatis Jr.’s final countdown has begun.
Come next Thursday, Tatis will rejoin a team that’s managed just four quality starts, been hit-and-miss so far at the plate and still wound up winning more games than they lost on the road against the NL East favorites.
“To be able to compete that way against those teams,” veteran Nelson Cruz said, “and missing those pieces, it tells a lot.”
That piece, as the Padres’ 42-year-old designated hitter described Tatis, homered three times, doubled and drove in eight runs in a five-hit effort at Triple-A El Paso, pushing his rehab batting line to .478/.586/1.087 over six games, other-worldly even by the Pacific Coast League’s hitter-friendly standards.
In front of a sellout crowd of 43,296 at Petco Park, Manny Machado finally hit his first home run of the season, but the Padres managed just two hits off a starter recalled from Triple-A Nashville, were four outs away from a two-run defeat when Grisham homered in the eighth and still lost in the 10th when Luis Garcίa could not keep Milwaukee’s ghost runner from scoring.
Garcίa walked the first batter he faced, a double-steal put runners on second and third and Rowdy Tellez’s ensuing sacrifice fly regained the lead for the Brewers.
The Padres might have manufactured a run in the same fashion, but Jake Cronenworth grounded to shortstop Willy Adames to lead off the bottom of the 10th. The Padres’ ghost runner, pinch-runner Brandon Dixon, took off on contact with the ball behind him, but Adames made a quick decision to go for the lead runner and cut him down a third to make things all that much easier on reliever Joel Payamps, who struck out Luis Campusano on three pitches to end the game with runners on first and second.
“I mean, we’ve had a couple of games that have kind of skewed our whole offensive numbers,” Padres manager Bob Melvin said before his team lost for the third time in four days to fall back to .500. “We’ve had some other games where we haven’t been so good. So it’s still early in the season. We have a deep lineup. We’re going to score runs. We have the ability at times to blow teams out. We also have Fernando Tatis coming as well. So pretty soon it’s going to lengthen our lineup some, but I think we expect to do a little bit more offensively.”
Padres starter Nick Martinez could have used a little bit more help before Grisham’s fourth blast of the season.
Martinez walked the first hitter he faced, gave up a two-run homer two batters later to Tellez and then a solo shot to Mike Broussard in the fifth. The bright side is his six innings amounted to just the team’s fourth quality start this season, saving a bullpen that’s been taxed.
Besides, given the firepower in the lineup even without Tatis — Juan Soto accepted his third Silver Slugger award before the game, Cruz has four of his own and Machado and Matt Carpenter both have one — three runs over six innings should be enough in most games.
It wasn’t on Thursday until Grisham’s blast, because the lineup for most of the game looked more like a team that ranks 16th with runners in scoring position, 25th in batting average, 19th in on-base percentage and 11th in slugging than the one that put up a 10-spot on Sunday in Atlanta in taking a four-game series against the NL East-favorite Braves.
They lost two of three in New York — in games started by Max Scherzer and Tylor Megill — and on Thursday were frustrated by a familiar face called up from the minors.
Colin Rea — yes, the Colin Rea with the elbow injury that thwarted a trade that would have sent Luis Castillo to San Diego — had not pitched in the majors since 2021, but he had Brewers manager Craig Counsell clapping as he walked to the mound to pull the 32-year-old right-hander after 5 2/3 innings.
Rea allowed just the one run, on Machado’s opposite-field blast in the first inning. The only other baserunners the former Padres’ 12th-rounder allowed were Xander Bogaerts’ first-inning single and Austin Nola’s fourth-inning walk.
Rea struck out six and was in line to win when he handed the ball to the bullpen.
Cronenworth hit into an inning-ending double play in the seventh, but former Padres first-rounder Matt Bush walked pinch-hitter Matt Carpenter with two outs in the eighth and Grisham yanked a fastball just over the wall in right to tie the game.
