Padres can't cash in late chances, fall to Reds in 11 innings
The Padres' No. 5 hitter traveled from El Paso, Texas, to Round Rock to San Diego on Monday to make his season debut. Their No. 6 and 9 hitters also started the year at Triple-A El Paso. Their seventh hitter began Tuesday with just 44 plate appearances. Their eight-hole hitter may have homered in three straight games but also carried a .161 batting average into the game.
Yeah.
The Padres really need the top of the lineup to start carrying its weight.
Fernando Tatis Jr. logged his first four-hit game of the season and top three erased an early deficit only for late missed opportunities to doom the Padres to a 5-3 loss to the Cincinnati Reds in 11 innings in front of a crowd of 40,469 at Petco Park.
"We had big opportunities, big at bats," center fielder Jackson Merrill said. "Just sometimes baseball isn’t right. It isn’t nice to you."
Added Padres manager Craig Stammen: "Multiple opportunities where we could have won definitely, for sure. We didn’t get the job done."
All told, the Padres stranded 13 runners and went 3-for-20 with runners in scoring position. Late in the game, they left runners on first and third in the eighth inning, saw Manny Machado and Gavin Sheets strike out with the bases loaded in the ninth and Freddy Fermin's bid for a fourth straight game with a homer die at the warning track after Samad Taylor's game-tying single in the 10th.
A half-inning later, Yuki Matsui allowed a two-run homer to Sal Stewart and Sung-Mun Song, Tatis and Jackson Merrill went down in order to end a game that did at least see life at the top of the lineup.
Tatis doubled during his four-hit game, Merrill logged an RBI triple in his two-hit game and Machado's two-hit game was his first multi-hit game in 33 games.
Still, the effort - weighed down by Sheets going 0-for-5 with three strikeouts as the cleanup hitter - ended with the Padres still looking for their first back-to-back wins since May 22-23.
"I’m not going to ever say we should have done this, shouldn’t do that," Merrill said. "Everybody knows what we should have done, but it didn’t happen. (Expletive) happens. So we come back tomorrow, we fight another day, we put it behind us.
"We have to at this point."
Padres starter Lucas Giolito continued to struggle with command, walking five over four innings of two-run ball. But the bullpen picked him up with five scoreless innings until Bradgley Rodriguez buckled in the 10th inning and Matsui did the same in the 11th.
Right-hander David Morgan struck out four over 1⅔ shutout frames, left-hander Adrián Morejón struck out three over 1⅓ scoreless innings and right-handers Jason Adam and Mason Miller each turned in a scoreless frame.
The Padres' game-tying rally arrived in the third inning against Reds right-hander Chase Burns (5⅔ IP, 2 ER) as Tatis singled with one out, Merrill followed with a triple and Machado poked a single over a drawn-in infield to tie the game.
The struggles of that trio have almost everything to do with the Padres' offense ranking last in runs, batting average, on-base percentage, slugging and OPS.
Complicating matters even further in the short-term, Xander Bogaerts went on paternity leave on Tuesday as Will Wagner arrived from El Paso to serve as the DH and five-hole hitter.
An injury-depleted lineup was also asking Samad Taylor to bat sixth after Monday's small-ball heroics and Sung-Mun Song to play shortstop in Bogaerts place for at least two games.
Including Machado, who entered the game with a major-league-worst .166 batting average, five Padres began Tuesday with a batting average at or below the Mendoza line: Fermin (.161), Song (.194), Merrill (.198) and Bryce Johnson (.200).
Giolito stranded his first walk in the first inning. But a two-out walk in the second came back to bite him after Matt McClain swiped second base and scored on Tyler Stephenson's single to center.
The next inning, Giolito allowed a one-out single, walked two in a row - including Nathaniel Lowe on four pitches - and failed himself when he let a tapper back to the mound slip under the glove.
The ball was hit too slow to expect a double play, but Giolito at least had an out a home had he been able to glove the ball.
He grouped to record the next two outs with David Morgan warming in the bullpen, but he walked another batter in the fourth inning and was at 85 pitches - one shy of a season high - when Padres manager Craig Stammen finally had to call on his relief corps to start the fifth inning.
The good news: The top of the lineup allowed Giolito to hand off a 2-2 game to Morgan.
The cause for concern that refuses to relent: Giolito threw nearly as many balls (42) as strikes (43) and tied a season high with five walks.
The two runs allowed in four innings did at least lower his ERA from 4.86 to 4.35 through five starts, but Giolito has four more walks (18) than strikeouts (14) through five starts (20 ⅔ innings) since joining the Padres rotation.
He has not completed five innings since doing so in back-to-back starts to start his Padres tenure.
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This story was originally published June 9, 2026 at 10:58 PM.