After they had ostensibly given up, the Padres did not give up.
The lots of scoring they did in the ninth inning was, for a variety of reasons, too little too late.
They lost 9-6 to the Giants on Saturday, the same result that had appeared inevitable while they hardly did anything offensively throughout most of the game.
But after they trailed by eight runs and Xander Bogaerts and Fernando Tatis Jr. had been given an early rest, the youngest players in their lineup conspired to finally make things happen, with five runs in the final inning that made the loss a little closer.
And it mattered to Mike Shildt.
“Who you are is what you do when you’re not completely comfortable,” the Padres manager said. “And no one was loving that situation we were in. But not one guy was giving in one iota. When you’ve got a team that doesn’t give in, you’ve got guys who won’t give in, that compete regardless of circ*mstances, that’s what good teams do. Good teams never give up and play the game right, regardless of the circ*mstance. So people talk about identity, people talk about test. No one likes the fact the game got away from us a little bit. That happens; it’s baseball. But how guys responded to it and how guys fought says everything.”
In that Saturday was the fifth game of the season, Shildt knows there is plenty of time remaining for what he believed the comeback attempt said about his team to actually matter.
On Saturday, what happened is that 24-year-old Eguy Rosario hit a two-run homer that got the Padres to 9-3 in the ninth inning. And after 20-year-old Jackson Merrill and José Azócar worked one-out walks, 23-year-old Graham Pauley hit a three-run homer off the right field foul pole before Jake Cronenworth and Manny Machado made the outs that ended the game.
Rosario, Azócar and Pauley had all been subbed into the game.
Their attempted heroics came at the end of a game in which the Giants eeked out a couple early runs on a peculiar sequence, scored their third run on a rare error by Fernando Tatis Jr. and added six runs in the eighth inning to build a 9-1 lead.
And the late burst came after the Padres’ offense had limped practically comatose into the ninth inning having gone 1-for-6 with runners in scoring position.
While that big inning by the Giants is what turned Saturday’s game into a brutal affair, it was the Padres leaking early and doing nothing to bounce back that set the tone for the day.
Dylan Cease retired the first four batters he faced in his Padres debut before Wilmer Flores walked with one out in the third inning. Flores moved to third on a bloop double by Michael Conforto that landed between left fielder Jurickson Profar and third baseman Tyler Wade. Flores scored on a sacrifice fly by Thairo Estrada, and Conforto followed him home on Tom Ford’s double.
Cease retired the Giants in order in the next two innings, and the Padres threatened in the fourth inning when Cronenworth and Machado began the bottom of that inning with singles and Profar singled with one out to load the bases.
But with LaMonte Wade Jr. having fielded Profar’s hit in shallow right field, Padres third base coach Tim Leiper put a late stop sign on Cronenworth. And the Padres came away with nothing after Wade struck out and Merrill lined out to Nick Ahmed at shortstop.
An error by Tatis, who appeared to lose sight of a sinking line drive by Ahmed, helped the Giants take a 3-0 lead in the fifth inning.
Cease’s run of eight consecutive outs ended when he walked Murphy with one out in the fifth. Ahmed then had his apparent out bounce off Tatis’ glove, allowing Murphy to get to third. Cease’s last batter would be Jung Hoo Lee, whose sacrifice fly to right field scored Murphy.
Jhony Brito replaced Cease, stranded Ahmed at third and went on to get through the seventh inning without allowing a baserunner.
The Padres’ first run came in the sixth. Cronenworth again led off with a single and, after Machado struck out and Kim popped out, scored on Profar’s groundball double to the corner in left field.
The Padres, who were 14-for-36 with runners in scoring position in their previous two games, were hitless in their lone at-bat with a runner in scoring position Friday and finished 2-for-7 in that situation Saturday.
The Giants scored all their runs in the eighth inning after reliever Tom Cosgrove struck out the first batter he faced before Lee hit his first MLB home run. Two singles and a walk loaded the bases before another single made it 5-1 and Conforto’s grand slam pushed the lead to 9-1.
That made Rosario’s two-run homer and Pauley’s towering blast merely a delay of the inevitable.
But not to the Padres.
Profar was standing next to Shildt when the final out was made. Shilt turned to him and remarked he loved the “fight” the Padres had shown.
“That’s what good teams do,” Profar responded to his manager.
After the game, Profar expanded on the thought.
“Since the beginning, even in spring training, we showed a lot of character,” he said. “We can see it. We always (felt) like we were in the game even though we were losing (big). But we never give up at-bats. That’s the sign of a really good team. We should never lose that. … It’s big. Not every game is going to be good. But we’ve got to stay on it. We’re not gonna put our heads down. We’re gonna (expletive)fight. Every at-bat matters. And it’s going to help us going forward.”
