Phillies rally to take series opener against Padres

PHILADELPHIA - Craig Stammen made the choice his team is built for.

The Padres manager would have loved to leave Randy Vásquez in a game in which he had thrown just 80 pitches through five innings.

But not with Bryce Harper due up to start the sixth. Not with the bullpen the Padres have.

"We’ve been trying to figure that out with our starting staff and the bullpen, and using our strength to our advantage as much as we can," Stammen said. "And that’s kind of what we’re trying to do there. Harps, I’ve seen him play for a long time, and he’s a pretty darn good player and has a flair for the dramatic. The way he looked against Randy, he just had that look in his eyes that he was seeing the ball really well. Not that Randy couldn’t have got him out that next time, but it felt good going to our bullpen there."

As has become more regular for the Padres of late, what they tried didn't work out in Tuesday night’s 3-2 loss to the Phillies.

The deciding run was scored in the sixth inning against Jeremiah Estrada – on a walk by Harper, a single by Brandon Marsh and a double-play grounder by Alec Bohm.

It was the second consecutive game in which Estrada walked the first batter he faced and ended up allowing a run.

That amounts to a chink in the Padres' armor.

The other thing that doomed them to a seventh loss in their past eight games is akin to a crack in their foundation.

They were hitless in seven at-bats with runners in scoring position on Tuesday. They are 5-for-49 (.102) in that circumstance in their past eight games, 2-for-41 (.049) in the seven losses over that span.

In their first game in June, after batting .200 in May, the Padres got seven hits Tuesday. Three of those were by Fernando Tatis Jr.

It was after the second of Tatis' hits, with two outs in the third inning, that Gavin Sheets put the Padres up 2-0 by sending his 10th home run of the season to the seats beyond the wall in right field.

The Phillies tied the game in the fourth when Harper followed Trea Turner's leadoff single with a 419-foot blast to left-center field, his 14th homer of the season

Those were two of the five hits Vásquez allowed.

With Estrada warming up, Vásquez made it through the fifth by stranding two runners following a one-out single and two-out walk, his first of the night.

"It was a good outing," Vásquez said through interpreter Jorge Merlos. "It wasn’t an excellent outing, but I kept battling out there. … I think an excellent outing would have been to put up a zero there and the team would win."

That is about what it would have taken for them to win.

The Padres had a runner on second or third base with less than two outs in three different innings.

Tatis began the game by driving a curveball from Aaron Nola to the gap in left-center field for a stand-up double. Sheets and Manny Machado followed by hitting pop-ups caught by infielders, and Miguel Andujar ended the inning with a groundout.

Andujar reached on an infield single to start the fourth inning and stole second base on the final pitch of Jackson Merrill's strikeout. Andujar was left on second after strikeouts by Xander Bogaerts and Jase Bowen.

And in the seventh, a walk by Bogaerts and Bowen's first major league hit put runners at the corners with one out before Sung-Mun Song struck out looking and pinch-hitter Ty France ended the inning with a grounder to shortstop.

It appeared the Padres would get another try to drive in a runner from second base in the eighth.

Tatis led off that inning with a single before Sheets and Machado flied out. Andujar followed with his second infield single chopped to Bohm, the third baseman, and Tatis rounded second far enough that he could not get back in time to beat the throw from Bohm.

"Just trying to be aggressive," Tatis said. "Thought it was going to be a close play at first. So just trying to make a turn over there and trying to make something happen. But obviously they saw me, and (Bohm) had his head on a swivel."

It was a mistake that perhaps simply kept them from another failure with a runner in scoring position. Or maybe it kept Merrill from coming through late in a game as he has multiple times even in this season in which his batting average has hovered around .200 for more days than it has been near .250.

As it turned out, Merrill was the first of three straight strikeout victims by Phillies closer Jhoan Duran in the ninth, as the Padres lost for the fourth time in four games in eight days to the Phillies.

"They just kind of outplayed us just a hair today," Stammen said. "You know, one-run win by them. We didn’t do the little things to help us stay in the game and win that one."

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This story was originally published June 2, 2026 at 6:59 PM.