Padres can't hit enough again, Michael King gets hit too much again in loss to Cardinals

ST. LOUIS - Padres manager Craig Stammen reflected Tuesday afternoon on what had happened the night before when his team got one hit, walked once and was shut out by Dustin May.

"You've got to try to learn from it some way or another - good or bad,” Stammen said. “… We can take something from it, because we’re gonna face pitchers like that when they’re on. And we've gotta find a way to battle. … If it’s the playoffs or a game that we need to win, we’ve gotta find a way to be a little bit more able to scratch runs across."

A few hours later, the Padres eventually did start hitting.

But not a lot.

Another languid game at the plate and Michael King struggling again on the mound doomed the Padres to a 3-2 loss to the Cardinals.

One night after May retired the first 18 Padres batters he faced, Andrew Pallante set down 14 in a row to start Tuesday's game.

The Padres got their first hit with two outs in the fifth inning because a ball caromed off Pallante's glove and because Samad Taylor is exceptionally fast. That is also why they got their first run.

Ty France followed Taylor's infield single, which survived a replay review, by lining a single to center field that easily scored Taylor, who had stolen second.

That cut the Cardinals' lead in half.

But King, who threw 86 pitches getting through four innings, hit Iván Herrera to start the fifth and then surrendered a single to Alec Burleson before a long fly ball by Jordan Walker moved Herrera to third and ended King’s day.

Yuki Matsui inherited runners at the corners and could not get out of the inning before Lars Nootbar hit a sacrifice fly to increase the Cardinals' lead.

“Especially after scoring, you want to keep the momentum,” King said. “Bad hit by pitch. Burleson put a good swing on a good pitch. Walker put a good swing on a good pitch. But ultimately, I shouldn’t be putting myself in those situations.”

Tuesday was the fifth straight start in which King (4-6, 3.60) allowed at least three runs after he did so in just two of his first 10 starts. It was the second time in five starts he failed to finish five innings after going at least that long in all of his first 10 starts.

“This is definitely the worst one of them all,” King said. “Obviously, I’m grinding. There are definitely days that I have that I feel pretty good, but yeah, last four or five, I definitely have not had good results.”

Tuesday’s result was ultimately decided by that final run, because the Padres kept hitting in the sixth. Again, just a little.

With two outs, Fernando Tatis Jr. grounded a ball through the right side, and Jackson Merrill drove him home with a double off the base of the wall in right-center field.

The inning ended with Manny Machado thinking he had walked.

But his apparent check swing on a full-count pitch was ruled by home plate umpire Nic Lentz to have been a swing. Machado had tossed his bat and was focused on taking off his protective gear and preparing to head to first base, so he did not realize he had been called out.

Once he looked up and saw the Cardinals were walking off the field, a discussion with Lentz briefly turned heated before Machado was escorted away by first base coach David Macias.

“It’s a key part of the game,” Machado said. “It’s a momentum swing. We had a rally there going. ‘Tati’ gets on base, Jackson with the double. I’m working the count there, get it to 3-2, check the swing, and the home plate umpire obviously makes the call where he should have just checked. Obviously, that changed the whole momentum of the game. Runners on first and second, his pitch count gets up, he has to throw to (Xander Bogaerts, the next batter) in that situation. I mean, things could have turned out different.”

The Padres still had three chances to make it so. But they did not reach base again until they were down to their final out.

Pallante (8-4, 3.76) got through the seventh by getting his fifth and sixth strikeouts and his 11th groundout. Ryne Stanek worked a 1-2-3 eighth. Riley O'Brien walked Machado with two outs in the ninth before Bogaerts grounded out.

At the end, Stammen looked back to the beginning.

“We’ve got to just be a little bit better against (Pallante) and fight him a little harder earlier in the game and get that pitch count up,” Stammen said, “so that we can make even more progress later in the game.”

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This story was originally published June 16, 2026 at 7:56 PM.