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.<\/p>\n
There were not enough heroics to go around Thursday night.<\/p>\n
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\u2019 five-game winning streak with a 4-1 victory.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 and one for extra bases \u2014 in losing the first game of the final third of the season in front of a sellout crowd of 42,758 at Petco Park.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in the hunt,\u201d Padres manager Craig Stammen said Thursday afternoon. \u201cIf you\u2019d asked us at the beginning of the year if we\u2019d be in this spot, we\u2019d probably have said, \u2018We wish we were a little bit (better than this),\u2019 but we\u2019re in the hunt, we have a chance, and we\u2019re playing good right now.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we\u2019re in a good spot two-thirds of the way through the season.\u201d<\/p>\n
At least better than they were a week ago.<\/p>\n
Instead of looking up at five teams ahead of them in the race for the NL\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s trade deadline.<\/p>\n
Thursday\u2019s setback was no help.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019 single.<\/p>\n
The Padres didn\u2019t put a runner in scoring position again until Luis Rengifo\u2019s one-out double in the sixth inning, but Manny Machado and France struck out to strand him at second base and the Giants\u2019 bullpen allowed just three baserunners over the final three innings.<\/p>\n
Sears had allowed one earned run over his previous 8\u2153 innings \u2014 one start and one bulk relief job \u2014 and was tapped to start Thursday against a lefty-heavy Giants lineup.<\/p>\n
He was in trouble after just the second batter of the game.<\/p>\n
A one-out walk to Heliot Ramos gave way to a single from Bryce Eldridge to put runners on first and third.<\/p>\n
Tatis\u2019 highlight-reel robbery limited the damage on Rafael Devers\u2019 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.<\/p>\n
Sears (3\u2154 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.<\/p>\n
But Peralta allowed the first two runners to reach in the fifth and one scored on a sacrifice fly off Randy V\u00e1squez to open a 4-1 lead for the Giants.<\/p>\n
V\u00e1squez did not allow any runs of his own over the final 4\u2154 innings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fernando Tatis Jr. covered more than 90 feet in a few seconds, leapt against the wall in right-center…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,1334,74,76,75,2611,127],"class_list":["post-419043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-latest-headlines","tag-mlb","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}