The Padres mounted one comeback this weekend.
A second apparently was far too much to ask of the majors’ weakest offense.
Freddy Fermin homered in a second straight game, but Randy Vásquez couldn’t get out of the fifth inning and the Padres’ expected run-producers continued their season-long swoon in a 7-3 loss to the New York Mets in front of a sell-out crowd of 41,159 at Petco Park on Sunday afternoon.
The Padres snapped a season-worst six-game skid on Saturday but trailed from the jump on Sunday in falling for the 11th time in 13 games.
Fermin’s second home run in as many days after going deep for the first time in 121 plate appearances briefly shaved the Padres’ deficit to 4-2 in the fifth inning, but left-hander Yuki Matsui gave the runs back on a pair of blasts in the sixth from MJ Melendez and rookie Carson Benge, who collected the first five-hit day of his career.
An offense that ranks last in runs, batting average, on-base percentage, slugging and OPS didn’t have another answer on Sunday.
In fact, signs of pressing continue to surface as Fernando Tatis Jr. was thrown out trying to swipe third base with the tying run at the plate in Ty France three batters after Fermin’s blast.
Tatis swiped his team-best 15th base after leading off the game with a walk, but he’s already been caught stealing seven times —tied for his career high — one week into June.
France grounded into a double play after Tatis and Jackson Merrill worked walks to start the game, the Padres went 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position and the team’s stars continued to come up short, led by Manny Machado going 0-for-4 to drop his batting average to .169, lowest among all MLB qualifiers.
Including Machado, the Padres’ two through four hitters combined to go 1-for-11, with Jackson Merrill accounting for that trio’s only baserunning via a walk and an infield single.
Adding injury to insult, Miguel Andujar exited in the seventh inning a batter after beating out an infield single, one of seven Padres hits in the game.
Vásquez was hit hard from the start but minimized the damage through four innings. He gave up a single and a double to start the game and only allowed Juan Soto an RBI groundout in the first inning and a Marcus Semien’s solo homer to start the second.
Vásquez stranded two runners in the third inning and a double in the fourth before the first four Mets reached to start the fifth. Jared Young’s bases-loaded single ultimately chased Vásquez from the game and A.J. Ewing’s sacrifice fly off Matsui staked New York to a 4-0 lead.
Matsui serving up solo homers to Melendez and Benge in the sixth quickly erased Fermin’s two-run blast.
Vásquez struck out three and allowed four runs, walked two and tied a season-high with eight hits allowed as his ERA rose to 6.16 over his last four starts, all losses for the Padres.
He had a 2.68 ERA while the Padres won eight of his first nine starts.