Walker Buehler rested his elbows on the dugout railing and watched his gem fall apart.
“You’re trying to watch a teammate get out of a jam that they came in to try and help you get out of,” Buehler said later.
When Adrian Morejón allowed both runners Buehler left him in the sixth inning to score, that was pretty much it for the Padres, who would lose 3-0 to the Phillies on Wednesday at Petco Park.
It was a rough day to have pitched so well, matched up as Buehler was against a pitcher in the midst of a run in which he is more difficult to score on than any wearing a Phillies uniform in more than a century.
“Their starting pitcher is on a little bit of a roll right now, to say the least,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said. “Pretty darn good. We battled him, but just not quite good enough.”
It is not that it was impossible the Padres were going to score against Cristopher Sanchez, but no one has since April.
By shutting out the Padres for seven innings, the left-hander ran his scoreless streak to 44⅔ innings, the longest by a Phillies pitcher since 2011 and the longest by any left-hander in at least 65 seasons.
And the major leagues’ most feeble offense just isn’t in a place where it can seem to mount comebacks anymore.
The Padres went down in order against Jonathan Bowlan in the eighth before getting one hit against José Alvarado in the ninth.
The meaningful scoring chances Wednesday came against Sanchez, but they went 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position against him and after failing once against Alvarado have now gone 35 at-bats without a hit in that circumstance.
The Padres, whose .218 batting average is lowest in the major leagues and whose .652 OPS is second lowest, were shut out twice by the Phillies and one other time in the nine-game homestand in which they went 3-6 against the Dodgers, Athletics and Phillies.
They came home from one of their best offensive series of the season, a three-game sweep against the Mariners in which they scored 17 runs and hit .255, and batted
So Buehler was going to have to match the hottest starting pitcher in the game for the Padres to have a chance of avoiding a fourth consecutive loss and being swept in a series for the first time this season.
He was more efficient than Sanchez.
Buehler threw 58 pitches in his 5⅓ innings.
But the last two batters he faced reached base, on a single lined up the middle by Justin Crawford and a pitch that hit Edmundo Sosa. So with the Phillies about to turn the order over and have MLB home run leader Kyle Schwarber face Buehler a third time, Padres manager Craig Stammen went to Morejón.
The left-hander, as good as any reliever in the major leagues at stranding runners over the past two seasons, got two ground balls. But the first made its way through the right side for an RBI single by Schwarber, and the second was an RBI fielder’s choice by Trea Turner that he hit too softly for it to produce a double play.
Morejón ended the inning by snagging a line drive by Bryce Harper and walked angrily off the mound.
Stammen continued to chase the victory, able to do so since the Padres are off Thursday before beginning a series in Washington on Friday, by deploying Jeremiah Estrada and Jason Adam for an inning apiece before Ron Marinaccio worked the ninth and allowed a home run to Turner.
The Padres finished with seven hits, same as the Phillies.
But, as has become the norm, the Padres’ hits were not well placed.
Three straight outs stranded Fernando Tatis Jr. at second base after he led off the first inning with a single and stole second.
A pair of two-out singles led to nothing in the second inning. Likewise for Ramón Laureano’s two-out double in the fourth.
And after Jackson Merrill doubled with one out in the seventh, Sanchez got Nick Castellanos on a groundout and struck out pinch-hitter Ty France.
With that, Sanchez became the first pitcher since Brandon Webb in 2007 and just the fifth pitcher ever to go at least seven scoreless innings in five consecutive starts.
During his run of scoreless innings, during which he passed Hall of Famer Grover Cleveland Alexander for the longest streak in Phillies history and future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw for the longest streak by a left-hander in the Expansion Era, Sanchez also has a complete game and has twice completed eight innings.