PHILADELPHIA — What a trip.

That phrase could be applied to the Padres as a team at various points in a seesaw season.

And at this moment, literally, what a trip.

The Padres could at least be cheerful on their flight across the country, as a horrid road trip ended with a 5-2 victory over the Phillies.

Matt Waldron went seven innings and was rewarded this time. Jackson Merrill kept hitting home runs. Luis Arraez broke a 1-1 tie in the seventh inning. Kyle Higashioka cleared loaded bases with his first career triple.

The victory avoided the Padres’ first winless trip of six games or more since 2009 and stopped a five-game losing streak overall and nine-game losing streak on the road.

The Phillies, who had 31 hits in the first two games of the series and entered Wednesday’s game with the highest batting average and second-highest OPS in the National League, from the start were flustered by Waldron’s knuckleball.

Even as they were loading the bases on a walk, a double and a hit batter in the first inning, they were shaking their heads and complaining about called strikes they thought were balls.

Waldron would allow just four hits the rest of the way, one of those being a home run by Bryce Harper that tied the game 1-1 in the third. Harper would also homer off Jeremiah Estrada in the bottom of the eighth, after the Padres had taken a 5-1 lead in the top of the inning.

Merrill’s third home run, on the trip was a solo homer with two outs in the second inning against major league ERA leader Ranger Suarez, and it gave the Padres their third lead in the past six games.

Merrill played a role in the Padres getting their next lead as well, this time by  getting hit by a pitch from Orion Kerkering with one out in the seventh. That was followed by Tyler Wade’s two-out single, which moved Merrill to third, and an RBI single by Arraez.

Jurickson Profar led off the eighth inning with a single, and Manny Machado followed by beating out the throw on a slow roller toward third base. That sent Jose Azócar, pinch-running for Profar, to second base.

After Donovan Solano struck out, Ha-Seong Kim grounded a ball to the hole at shortstop, and Azócar slowed long enough to block third baseman Alec Bohm’s view of the ball. Bohm mishandled the ball, and the bases were loaded.

Merrill popped out, bringing up Kyle Higashioka, who on an 0-1 count put a three-quarter swing on a ball that sailed into center field and went under the glove of a diving Brandon Marsh and rolled 50 feet beyond him as all the runners ran home and Higashioka sprinted to third.