Fernando Tatis Jr. covered more than 90 feet in a few seconds, leapt against the wall in right-center and pulled a ball back to spare JP Sears from a disastrous first inning.
There were not enough heroics to go around Thursday night.
Sears avoided one longball only to give up one the next inning, Giants left-hander Robbie Ray flummoxed the Padres for six frames the Giants snapped the Padres’ five-game winning streak with a 4-1 victory.
Instead of adding to playoff odds that have swelled from just over 7% to just over 22% in over a week, according to Fangraphs.com, the Padres managed just six hits — and one for extra bases — in losing the first game of the final third of the season in front of a sellout crowd of 42,758 at Petco Park.
“We’re in the hunt,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said Thursday afternoon. “If you’d asked us at the beginning of the year if we’d be in this spot, we’d probably have said, ‘We wish we were a little bit (better than this),’ but we’re in the hunt, we have a chance, and we’re playing good right now.
“So we’re in a good spot two-thirds of the way through the season.”
At least better than they were a week ago.
Instead of looking up at five teams ahead of them in the race for the NL’s third wild-card spot, the Padres (55-54) are two games behind both the Phillies and Diamondbacks, who are tied for the second and third wild-card spots.
The Marlins, Pirates and Nationals are all 55-55 and a half-game behind the Padres in that chase, with just three games against the Giants (46-62) to convince baseball ops chief A.J. Preller to put the team in an even better spot before Monday’s trade deadline.
Thursday’s setback was no help.
Ray struck out six over six innings of one-run ball, with the Padres getting to him just once before he handed the ball off to his bullpen.
Ty France was hit by a pitch to start the second inning and Jackson Merrill followed with a single to bring the tying run to the plate in a 3-0 game. But Luis Campusano grounded sharply into a double play and the Padres managed just one run on Xander Bogaerts’ single.
The Padres didn’t put a runner in scoring position again until Luis Rengifo’s one-out double in the sixth inning, but Manny Machado and France struck out to strand him at second base and the Giants’ bullpen allowed just three baserunners over the final three innings.
Sears had allowed one earned run over his previous 8⅓ innings — one start and one bulk relief job — and was tapped to start Thursday against a lefty-heavy Giants lineup.
He was in trouble after just the second batter of the game.
A one-out walk to Heliot Ramos gave way to a single from Bryce Eldridge to put runners on first and third.
Tatis’ highlight-reel robbery limited the damage on Rafael Devers’ ensuing drive to the wall in right-center to a sacrifice fly, but Sears gave up a leadoff single in the second inning and found himself trailing 3-0 anyway when Daniel Susac ambushed a middle-in fastball and yanked it 406 feet to left field.
Sears (3⅔ IP, 3 ER) sidestepped traffic in the third inning and was bailed out in the fourth, when left-hander Wandy Peralta struck out Eldridge with the bases loaded after Campusano challenged a ball call.
But Peralta allowed the first two runners to reach in the fifth and one scored on a sacrifice fly off Randy Vásquez to open a 4-1 lead for the Giants.
Vásquez did not allow any runs of his own over the final 4⅔ innings.