The top wild-card team in the NL, the Padres control their own destiny.
A little more breathing room would be nice.
Dylan Cease coughed up an early lead and a starting lineup missing Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jackson Merrill squandered threat after threat in a 6-3 loss to the Giants on Saturday, costing the Padres a prime opportunity to improve their postseason position.
The Diamondbacks, after all, have lost three in a row only to see the Padres give up a lead in losing for the second time in three days.
The Padres still have a 1½-game lead on Arizona in the race for the NL’s top wild-card spot, but the race is as tight as ever with the Mets, winners of nine in a row, leapfrogging the Braves to move into the third wild-card spot, a half-game behind Arizona and two games behind the Padres.
“Can’t worry too much about the other teams,” second baseman Xander Bogaerts said. “I keep saying it. Why? You’re just wasting energy on stuff that you can’t control and sometimes seeing that scoreboard makes you want to do a little bit too much sometimes.
“We missed a big opportunity today, but in a couple hours we’ll be back here and have a good chance to have a good series win.”
This one was within arm’s reach until Yuki Matsui allowed Grant McCray’s second home run in the ninth inning.
Which makes stranding seven runners and bouncing in three double plays all the more frustrating, even with a scheduled off-day for Tatis and Merrill sitting with a left knee bruise.
The sinker-balling Webb, naturally, fetched all three twin-killings and the Giants’ bullpen retired fetched the final nine outs despite Tatis leading off the ninth with a pinch-hit double off closer Ryan Walker.
Merrill grounded out as a pinch-hitter, Donovan Solano flied out to center — also as a pinch-hitter — and Luis Arraez flied out to left to strand Tatis at second base in a loss that kept the Padres from adding game to their wild-card lead.
“We got (Webb) early,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said. “Baess loaded, able to scratch a couple and just weren’t able to add on. We got one in the fifth and he made pitches. He’s a veteran guy, so he kept the ball down and we had some good swings at him and just couldn’t add on too much.”
If only.
After all, Webb was on the ropes when Arraez began a three-hit game with a single and Jurickson Profar followed with his own single. Jake Cronenworth then worked a walk to load the bases and Manny Machado singled to center to plate the game’s first run.
A good start, to be sure.
But Bogaerts traded two outs for a run on his ensuing grounder to second and the Padres settled for just two runs after loading the bases to start the game against last year’s NL Cy Young runner-up.
The Padres scratched across another run in the fifth inning on Arraez’s third hit of the game, but still walked away from Saturday’s game lamenting missed opportunities.
Cronenworth bounced into an inning-ending double play in the second inning, Bogaerts left the bases loaded in that fifth inning on a bouncer to shortstop and Mason McCoy’s sixth-inning comebacker allowed Webb to start an inning-ending double play with two on in a 4-3 game.
Webb allowed 10 hits, but only Tyler Wade’s fifth-inning double went for extra bases. He struck out three and walked two in escaping with a quality start.
“The good thing is we play baseball tomorrow,” Bogarts said. “We can wash out what we did today. We obviously didn’t play our best game, and I left way too many guys on the bases. It’s a frustrating night.”
Cease completed six innings for just the second time since his July 25 no-hitter, but he was not all that sharp until retiring the last seven hitters he faced.
By then he’d already allowed the Giants to erase a 2-0 lead on McCray’s third-inning, three-run homer and add on via with the help of walks in the fourth inning via McCray’s bases-loaded double play.
Cease threw 61 of his 101 pitches for strikes, allowed six hits, walked two and struck out four.
The home run he allowed to McCray on a middle-middle slider was the first he’d given up since Aug. 17, but he also has a 5.01 ERA over his last six starts.
“Especially early, it wasn’t great,” Cease said. “But I battled, but ultimately it wasn’t good enough.”
The 23-year-old McCray added a two-run homer in the ninth off Matsui to turn a 4-3 lead into a three-run cushion, dampening the prospect for heroics in the bottom of the inning.
Tatis laced a double to right on the first pitch he saw from Walker, but Merrill grounded out to third on the first pitch he saw in what could be seen as a positive development in the loss.
Merrill had progressed enough to take an at-bat. He declined to speak with reporters as he headed to the training room for continued treatment, but Shildt remained optimistic that the Padres’ NL Rookie of the Year candidate could return to the lineup Sunday.
“Still evaluate it tonight, but optimistic moving forward,” Shildt said. “Clearly a good sign. Him and Tati were both pretty much in the role they were in tonight. You know, kind of emergency, take an at-bat kind of thing. Both of them had their head around it, good team guys, tough guys. You know, you win with tough guys and we got a lot of them.”
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