TORONTO — That Wednesday night’s game devolved into a rout was a technicality.
What does it matter when a team can’t score?
“One-nothing, 14-nothing, it’s a loss,” Manny Machado said. “A loss is a loss. It still hurts as much, and you don’t want to be on that side.”
For the record, the Padres lost 14-0 on Wednesday.
The Blue Jays scored five runs in the seventh inning and seven more in the eighth. Machado committed three errors, Jake Cronenworth bobbled a ball that might have prevented a run and helped end the carnage earlier in the seventh and Jose Iglesias erred in the eighth. The final two runs were allowed by Tyler Wade, a utility player who added pitcher to the six other positions he has played in the major leagues.
But Wednesday’s game really turned on Nathan Lukes’ two-run homer in the fifth inning off Randy Vásquez.
That was twice as many runs as the Blue Jays needed.
Yes, the Padres could have come back from a two-run deficit in the final two innings had the game not gotten out of hand. They have done something like that multiple times this season.
But the Padres are not presently that team.
This is a team that has lost a season-high five straight games and scored three runs while doing it, the fewest any Padres team has scored in a stretch that long since 1972.
The Padres lost five games four different times in 2024 en route to 93 wins and a playoff appearance. The best teams in history have had losing streaks like this.
But it is the underlying sickness of the offense that makes this skid so troubling.
The only time a Padres team has scored less over a five-game span was in the franchise’s first year of existence. That expansion team scored two runs in five games from June 20-23, 1969, and went on to finish the season 52-110.
This Padres team remains seven games above .500, at 27-20. But that feels nowhere near good.
“We need to change that as soon as possible,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said.
But they say this awful skid is not awfully concerning.
“We’re just having a rough stretch,” Tatis said. “… Guys are putting good at-bats, just, it’s not happening.”
There is something of a split opinion on that. Probably because there continue to be a bunch of good at-bats. Just as they made a number of good defensive plays Wednesday.
“We’re hitting the ball hard, right at guys,” Machado said. “Obviously, we’re not hitting with runners in scoring position, we’re not getting those runs across. I think we’re fighting our butts off out there in those appearances. (Stuff) is just not (expletive) rolling for us. (Stuff) is not falling. But I like where our bats are. We just gotta keep going. And eventually they’ll (expletive) fall.”
The Padres had five hits, two of them after they were down 7-0. They were 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position, running their hitless streak in that situation to 32 at-bats dating to the start of the losing streak.
“It’s starting to creep in a little bit (with) guys pressing,” manager Mike Shildt said. “You know, it did feel like it (wore) on us a little bit defensively.”
This is a team that ranked second in the major leagues in batting average, 11th in OPS and 14th in runs scored as recently as Friday afternoon.
Now they have gone 26 innings without scoring and are not hitting all that often either.
The Padres are batting .200 during their skid.
Two of their five hits Wednesday were by Luis Arraez. His going 8-for-19 over the past five games is propping up that team batting average. Take away Arraez, and the Padres are batting .171 over the five games.
It was a solemn clubhouse as players trudged in and out following Wednesday’s game. The mood said they were feeling the weight of their offensive impotence. Their words expressed resolve.
“Sometimes it’s a series of events,” Jackson Merrill said. “Sometimes they just don’t go the right way. I don’t really have much to say on it. I just kind of want to move past it. It’s over and done with.”
That would be the message from Shildt as well.
“We get the privilege of seeing them do it and be able to be successful at it pretty consistently as a group,” Shildt said. “And we haven’t seen it the last five days, and no one’s going to alibi that. But the answer is to get up, keep our head up and make sure our focus is in the right spot and doesn’t let it have any collectiveness to it.”
