DENVER — The previous time Walker Buehler pitched here, as a member of the Dodgers, he departed after four innings with his team trailing by five runs.
The Dodgers won that game by two runs.
That is how it often goes at Coors Field.
But not presently for the Padres, who have the past two days in Major League Baseball’s most generous ballpark scored a total of four times.
A night after scoring the game’s only run on a bases-loaded walk, in the greatest hitters’ paradise to regularly host big-league games, the Padres’ bats remained cold on Wednesday in an 8-3 loss to the Rockies.
Buehler missed on some pitches while allowing four runs in the second inning. But the Padres hitters, who did have some long but fruitless at-bats, also missed on some pitches.
“As much as it’s a good place to hit, you still gotta put good at-bats together,” Gavin Sheets said. “And these guys are throwing the ball well.”
The defeat was the Padres’ first in four games and just their second in their past 13. It was arguably their most curious one this season.
They have faced a preponderance of starting pitchers with overwhelming velocity and stuff this season, but that is not what they saw Wednesday from Tomoyuki Sugano.
The right-hander, who survives with a good splitter, has a 3.42 ERA, though much of that owes to his having allowed the Padres three runs in 11⅔ innings in two starts against them this season.
If anything overmatched them, it was perhaps their expectations of how playing 5,200 feet above sea level might help them rediscover their slugging ability.
“I think all the hitters look forward to coming here and hitting,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said. “Hopefully, get themselves right and get back on a hot streak. So far, we haven’t got that, but we got one more game here and see how it goes.”
Buehler departed Wednesday night’s game against the Rockies with the Padres down by three in the third inning.
Kyle Hart took over with two outs and the bases loaded and ended the third before allowing a run in the fourth. David Morgan allowed the Rockies’ lead to get to 6-1 in the sixth and 7-1 in the seventh. Wandy Peralta allowed another run in the eighth.
So the bullpen did not suppress the Rockies the way it has in allowing the Padres to stage comebacks from six runs down once and four runs down twice.
It would not have mattered.
Luis Campusano’s solo homer in the seventh inning, which stopped the Padres’ homerless drought at five games, was the only real sign of life by the Padres. Campusano also doubled twice, giving him three of the Padres’ seven hits. His double in the ninth inning was accompanied by an error, which got him to third base; he then scored on Jake Cronenworth’s groundout.
The Padres a week ago were on a tear of eight games in which they never scored fewer than three runs and averaged 6.5 runs per game. They have scored a total of 10 runs over their past five games.
And their past two games have been at a ballpark a mile above sea level that historically yields 11 runs and 1½ homers per game.
“Baseball is so unpredictable,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said.
They now have three games remaining in the thin air of cities well above sea level — Thursday’s series finale and games over the weekend against the Diamondbacks in Mexico City (elevation 7,350 feet).
That no longer carries the promise it seemed to a couple days ago. But it’s not nothing.
“We know we can score eight runs, 12 runs,” Tatis said. “We need to put good at-bats out there, and hopefully the ball drops.”
The Padres took a 1-0 lead in the first inning Wednesday by doing something neither team did in Tuesday’s series opener. They drove in a run by putting the ball in play.
A day after the only run in a Padres victory came on Manny Machado’s bases-loaded walk, Ramón Laureano led off the game with a nine-pitch walk. He went to second on a groundout by Tatis and scored on Jackson Merrill’s single.
Buehler survived a two-out double in the first before the Rockies batted around and took a 4-1 in the second inning on a double and five singles.
The singles included two that could have been outs and kept the game 1-1.
But Jake McCarthy’s grounder up the middle bounced off the bag at second base instead of becoming the second out it seemed destined to. And Edouard Julien followed with a grounder that went through the infield at the precise spot shortstop Xander Bogaerts had been standing before he went to cover second base on a hit-and-run.
“They hit the ball where we weren’t,” Buehler. “(But) for me, dictating contact point and (stuff) like that, that’s my job. And I didn’t do good enough.”