Sliding Padres swept by Phillies again
PHILADELPHIA - The offense came to life for parts of a few innings.
So it cannot be said that the Padres finished their worst road trip in three seasons with their worst game of this season.
At least not offensively.
No, new problems combined with the lack of hits to doom what just might be a crumbling club on Thursday.
A throwing error led directly to a run in the middle of the game, another high-leverage reliever allowed runs late and the Phillies completed a season sweep of the Padres with a 6-4 victory on Thursday.
That completed a 1-5 trek that began Friday in Washington. It was the Padres' worst trip since they had the same record against the Mets and Phillies in June 2024.
“Not our best baseball, but it’s not who we are as a team,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said. “… A little bit of frustration, a little bit of us pressing. But that’s the nature of a long season. And it is a long season, and we’ve got a lot of baseball left to play. I know those guys are looking forward to it, and they’re going to fight till the end.”
The Padres actually seem tired. They are short on answers. But one of their leaders found hope in the belief that a ninth loss in 10 games is rock bottom.
“I don’t think it can get worse,” Manny Machado said.
The Padres at least won the final game of that bad 2024 trip and got to enjoy the flight home. They won the first game on this trip and have scored 14 runs since while batting .187 and leading for five of 40 innings.
Thursday, they seemed to have virtually no chance of winning for all but the few minutes that followed Machado's two-run homer in the top of the seventh inning.
There was also Jackson Merrill's two-run homer with no outs in the ninth that perhaps a month ago would have felt like it might spark something - back when they were making a habit of coming back to win.
But José Alvarado retired Xander Bogaerts, Miguel Andujar and Jase Bowen to end the game.
Machado's 435-foot blast, the second of the two hits the Padres got off Phillies starter Zack Wheeler, did not tie the game because a wild pickoff throw by Yuki Matsui had given the Phillies an extra run in the fifth inning.
In the end, since the Phillies were able to score three times on three hits and a walk against Adrian Morejón in the bottom of the seventh, the errant throw by catcher Freddy Fermin in that inning did not matter.
The Padres' first five-game losing streak of the season has seen them score two runs three times and four runs twice.
That is about on par with the majority of the season. They headed home ranked last in the major leagues with a .216 batting average and .651 OPS.
And they headed home with a bullpen that has been rendered extraneous by the offense's inability to give them a lead and some high-leverage relievers who have had a rough go of late.
A day after Jason Adam allowed a tie game to turn into a deficit and two days after Jeremiah Estrada did the same, Morejón suffered a bit of bad luck but also walked the first batter he faced and surrendered a couple hard hits in the seventh as the game got away.
“Our pitchers lately have been doing so good,” Bogaerts said. “I feel like they’ve been doing extra good considering the circumstances. Every time you look up in the fifth inning we don’t have a run. If it’s not for them we’re not even in the game. These last few games, we get a big hit and the bullpen gives up a run. Yeah, but they are at one point going to. It’s just the bad timing of it. They are human. It’s hard having three, four, five hits. We are not making it easy on our pitchers. We’re not giving them no cushion, no breathing room, no nothing.”
Padres starter Lucas Giolito had allowed a run on four hits through four innings when Adolis Garcia led off the fifth inning by driving a curveball left in the heart of the strike zone 429 feet to give the Phillies a 2-0 lead. Justin Crawford lined the next pitch, an elevated changeup, to right field for a double.
That ended Giolitio's day, and Matsui almost kept him from paying for Crawford’s double.
But after walking Kyle Schwarber and getting two outs, Matsui threw wide and low on a pickoff attempt at first base. As the ball rolled around in foul territory, Crawford easily scored.
Matsui ended the inning with a strikeout, and Ron Marinaccio worked a scoreless sixth before Machado made it close.
Prior to Gavin Sheets' walk directly in front of Machado, the Padres' only baserunners against Wheeler had been Ty France on a second-inning walk and Bryce Johnson on a single slapped the other way into left field with one out in the sixth.
Johnson also singled in the eighth, and the Padres finished with four hits. It was their 12th time getting no more than four hits in a game. Eight of those paltry performances have come in the past 33 games, as the Padres have fallen from 19-9 to 32-29.
“People are frustrated,” Machado said. “The fans want us to win games. So do we. We’re more frustrated than anybody. We want to turn things around, and I think everybody on this ballclub is trying to do that. So we’re gonna keep working and just know that we’re still in a good position, even though we’re playing like dog (expletive). Things will turn around. It’s a long season. There’s still a lot of baseball to be played, and this group in here knows it. All we can do is keep working, and things will change.”
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This story was originally published June 4, 2026 at 1:15 PM.