Athletics jump on Michael King, Padres can't bounce back in series-ending loss

There is no supposed to in baseball.

At least not in the context of a single game. The sport isn’t predictable.

Most times this season, the Padres can be thankful for that.

They hit less often than any team, yet they have won more often than just a handful of teams.

On Sunday, though, the vagaries of baseball worked against them and deprived them of a series sweep.

That and the fact that they continued to make outs when a hit would matter most.

“Just couldn’t get the big knock,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said. “Kept building momentum, but didn’t finalize the last punch.”

They lost 5-2 to the Athletics on a cool, cloudy afternoon at Petco Park when their No. 1 starter got battered around and they could not turn nine hits into much of anything.

They threatened to win another game in the final half-inning, something they have done an MLB-high eight times.

But after Jackson Merrill and Ramón Laureano walked to start the ninth inning, Ty France struck out against left-hander Hogan Harris before righty Scott Barlow came in to strike out pinch-hitter Nick Castellanos and get Tatis on a game-ending fly ball to right field.

“First two at-bats, guys did a great job getting on,” France said. “Felt like we had some momentum. We just stopped it.”

The ending, though, was just that. The Padres were down from the start, and all of their rallies in between turned out to be just hiccups.

The Athletics used opener Luis Medina before handing the ball to struggling left-hander Jacob Lopez, who allowed one run over 4⅔ innings and lowered his ERA to 5.73 in his best outing of the season.

Padres starter Michael King, conversely, had his worst start and was gone before the fourth inning was finished with the Padres trailing 4-0.

The Athletics scored a run in the ninth inning against Bradgley Rodriguez to make the lift heavier for the Padres in the ninth.

Those were their first runs since the fourth inning, as Padres relievers Ron Marinaccio and Wandy Peralta did their part to facilitate a comeback by combining for 4⅓ scoreless innings.

King's troubles began with the first batter of the game.

After Carlos Cortes watched two strikes and fouled off the next three pitches, he sent a changeup at the bottom of the zone 380 feet, off the top of the right-field wall and into the seats.

It got worse from there, as nine of the final 18 batters King (4-3, 2.76) faced reached base.

The Athletics added two runs on a walk, a double and a single in the second inning. After a leadoff double in the fourth inning, a pair of one-out walks loaded the bases before King got a second out. But a wild pitch brought home the Athletics’ fourth run.

“I never felt like I had it,” King said.

The Padres, whose five comebacks from four runs down are most in the major leagues, could not manage another.

This time it wasn't because the lightest-hitting team in the major leagues was impotent at the plate. The Padres had more hits than in any of their previous five games and raised their MLB-worst batting average one point to .220.

But none of those hits came with runners in scoring position.

They went 0-for-8 with men on second and/or third base Sunday, scoring only on Manny Machado's sacrifice fly in the sixth inning and France's home run in the seventh.

It was the fifth time in six games the Padres went hitless with runners in scoring position, and they are 2-for-26 in that circumstance over those six games.

They had beaten the Athletics on Friday with seven runs on seven hits and won Saturday with two runs on two hits. The former came with a boost from three home runs, the latter with help from an avalanche of walks.

Some of the Sunday traffic ran right into outs. And Padres manager Craig Stammen had no problem with either Tatis ending the third inning when he was thrown out trying to turn a single into a double or when the fifth inning ended when third base coach Bob Henley directed France to try to score from first base on Tatis’ double to left.

“That’s when you do it - with two outs,” Stammen said. “Can’t guarantee the next person is gonna be able to move the line. So, when you get a chance, you gotta take it.”

Stammen had talked last week about his desire for the Padres to run more. He said it had been difficult to do so when they were not getting on base all that much. But that struggle is part of what sparked a recent directive to be more aggressive on the bases.

“We cannot be afraid of making mistakes,” he said. “We start playing passive, unaggressive baseball, we’re just going to set ourselves up for a conservative ‘You didn’t do anything wrong, but you didn’t win the game.’ At least today we can go back, ‘We lost the game, but you know what, we put it all out there and did what we could do to try to create some energy, create some runs, some aggressiveness.’ And we’ll go home satisfied with that.”

Sunday was just the second time the Padres lost in 19 games in which they have gotten at least nine hits. And the Padres took encouragement from all the traffic.

“We’re looking better as a group,” Tatis said. “We’re just gonna keep going, and it’s gonna come at the right moment.”

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This story was originally published May 24, 2026 at 4:42 PM.