The job of a back-of-the-rotation starter is to give his team a chance to win, and Germán Márquez did not do it on Tuesday.
The Padres briefly appeared capable of overcoming that. Then they didn’t give themselves much a chance.
They made it a game by putting together their biggest inning of the season, but the combination of an ineffective starter, a reliever who tired and defense that wasn’t at its sharpest were too much to get past.
With a three-run first inning and four-run sixth inning, the San Francisco Giants rolled to a 9-3 victory, their second in two nights at Petco Park and second of the season.
The Padres fell to 1-4 going into the finale of their first homestand Wednesday afternoon.
Márquez, the veteran right-hander trying to bounce back and protract his career, left the game with the Padres down 4-3 after three innings.
A lead-off home run by Willy Adames, a walk and two other hits (plus a throw to the wrong base by left fielder Nick Castellanos) had the Giants up 3-0 a half-inning in.
It was the second time in five games the Padres have trailed by at least that many runs before coming to bat.
The fact they had not yet scored four runs in a game did not bode well.
By the third time they came to bat, they had a four-run deficit to overcome after Matt Chapman homered to lead off the third inning.
The two homers Márquez allowed cleared the left field wall by a combined foot or maybe two. All of that distance came on Chapman’s blast, which landed in the first row of seats, as Adames sky-high fly ball came down on top of the wall before bouncing up and off the Western Metal building’s brick.
Marquez walked just the one batter but left a lot of pitches fat in the strike zone in allowing eight hits.
He did do well to keep it from being worse.
Three one-out singles loaded the bases in the second before Márquez got a fly ball to shallow center field and one to left to escape.
Giants starter Logan Webb’s command was not great either. It just took a while for the Padres to take advantage. And they did so in just one inning.
Webb found whatever he was missing after that, finishing six innings to become the fourth pitcher to turn in a quality start against the Padres this season.
Fernando Tatis Jr. was the only one to do damage on one of the multiple hittable pitches Webb left in the strike zone. He was stranded after a one-out double down the right field line in the first, as Webb weathered a walk in that inning and the second.
The Padres made Webb pay the second time through the order.
One-out walks by Tatis and Manny Machado in the third inning ran Webb’s pitch total to 55 – 28 balls and 27 strikes. Jackson Merrill then reached down for a changeup at his shins and lined it into right field to get Tatis home and Machado to third base.
A groundout by Xander Bogaerts got Machado home and moved Merrill, who was running on a full-count pitch, to second. From there, Merrill scored on Miguel Andujar’s single to cut the Giant’s lead to 4-3.
Kyle Hart replaced Márquez to start the fourth and worked two scoreless innings before Harrison Bader led off the sixth with a long fly ball to the gap in right field that Merrill ran 111 feet to get to before pulling up as the ball fell between him, the wall and Tatis, giving Bader a double.
A walk and three successive one-out singles followed. The last of those, with the bases loaded, came against Bradgley Rodriguez. The young right-hander got out of the inning on a sacrifice fly and a groundout, but with the Padres trailing by five.
The Giants added a run in the ninth against David Morgan, thanks in part to a single off Machado glove’s and a single blooped into center field.