LOS ANGELES — Write it in permanent and lamentable ink, the needling regret that will rob the Padres of sleep during a long and contemplative offseason.
Where did the offense, so bankable so often during a regular season like no other, sparking boundless potential, vanish to with the spotlight brightest and when it was needed most?
Twenty-four innings, stacked on top of each other from Game 2 to the deciding Game 5 of the National League Division Series. Plate appearances quiet enough to hang out in the Vatican library.
Zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero and one last fate-sealing zero.
They piled up, inning after inning, until the Dodgers secured a ticket to the NL Championship Series with a 2-0 victory Friday at Dodger Stadium.
The Padres’ offense, a collective contact machine that led baseball in average for the first time in franchise history, evaporated at the most painfully inopportune and exasperating time.
Poof.
Gone.
And so, too, are the Padres.
“I think ‘stunning’ is appropriate,” manager Mike Shildt said. “Yeah.”
Credit a healthy share of that to Dodgers pitching, which many times was undeniably elite. That was expected with a bullpen overflowing with arms. Surprise starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto spun five big-game innings, too.
Teams that earn spots late in the playoffs find ways to punch through, though.
The Padres sprinkled just 11 hits across all those scoreless innings, mounting so few pressure-spiking moments that the other dugout needed little offense of their own to find the finish line.
The Dodgers wrestled away just the fourth season-deciding game in the Padres’ postseason history on two swings.
In the second inning, Kike Hernandez jumped the first pitch he saw from Yu Darvish for a no-doubt home run to left. In the seventh, the other Hernandez — Teoscar — launched another into the Los Angeles night.
“I want to say bad timing,” Padres right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr. said of the scoreless streak after his 0-for-4 night. “You know, the boys were going out there and putting tough at-bats. … Obviously, you know, they pitch good. They pitch good, simple as that.”
The finish amounted to the cruelest of fates for Darvish, who exhibited brilliance on an international stage in two starts against the Dodgers during the series.
Across 13 2/3 innings against baseball’s most nerve-rattling lineup, he allowed three runs on six hits with seven strikeouts and only three walks.
That’s a recipe for two wins. He got one.
On a winner-take-all stage, Darvish struck out Shohei Ohtani two of the three times they matched up. He kept traffic off the bases in front of him before all three of their shared at-bats.
It was not enough, because his offense failed to follow.
“Yu was magnificent again,” Shildt said.
The season and Darvish’s huge performances late made the Padres’ drought, so long and toothless, all the more difficult to stomach and explain.
Shildt preached the concept of being “elite adjustors” along the winding highway from spring training to the playoffs. That did not happen with the season on the line and a minuscule deficit within reach in the final, frustrating game.
“Yeah, especially against the Dodgers,” said Padres catcher Kyle Higashioka, who collected one of his team’s two hits. “We hit well against them all year. They figured it out at the right time.”
There’s no doubt the teams dished up must-watch theater that lived up to the sizable hype. Each won on the other’s home field when it was critical. Each blew away the other on the rugged road.
The microscopic separator between two big-league behemoths who raced to 85 wins since the All-Star break came down to the team that found big swings and one that whiffed.
Two runs became the judge and jury that decided who kept a World Series dream alive while another wobbled and wondered how a wild batch of success ended before October fully found its wings.
“Nothing but absolute respect and admiration for our entire club,” said Shildt, hunting for a bigger and less disheartening picture. “It’s a club that from day one poured everything they had into this, every single guy.”
Two hits with a season dangling by a thread yells head-scratcher as much as it realizes a losing team’s most alarming nightmare. The Padres struck out five times in six plate appearances against Dodgers relievers in the seventh and eighth innings.
When the chances dwindled and the importance ballooned, the Padres came up empty.
Timing is everything, especially when there’s no tomorrow.
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