Better not good enough for Padres, who lose sixth game in a row

Kevin Acee, The San Diego Union-Tribune on May 22, 2025

Published in Baseball

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TORONTO — The Padres reminded themselves who they were.

“I like this game,” Luis Arraez said. “This game is the San Diego Padres. When we compete, we look like that.”

Looking better and feeling better about it was the only win on Thursday.

The Padres lost the crapshoot that is modern extra innings and lost a sixth straight game. A walk-off single by Nathan Lukes in the 11th inning gave the Blue Jays a 7-6 victory that completed the three-game sweep.

“I thought we fought well,” Gavin Sheets said at the end of an afternoon in which he hit a pair of two-run homers and drove in the go-ahead run with a single in the 11th inning. “I thought we had chances to kind of lay over, and we didn’t. Obviously, it’s a tough stretch. It’s 162 games. You’re gonna go through this. You try to minimize it as much as you can. But games like today are how you minimize this. You compete, you battle, you put up good at-bats and you just fight.”

That is what the Padres were left to hold onto as they prepared for a flight back across the border and down to Atlanta for the second half of this road trip.

They have fallen to 27-21, closer to fourth place in the National League West (two games up on the Diamondbacks) than to first place (three games behind the Dodgers). The Padres led the division and had the second-best record in Major League Baseball less than two weeks ago. They were in second place when they arrived in Canada on Monday.

Then they failed to score for two games. That was after scoring one run in each of their three losses to the Mariners at home last weekend.

“We hit better,” Jackson Merrill said Thursday. “We scored. That’s pretty obvious.”

The reality is Sheets and Merrill (2 for 4 with a walk) and Arraez (2 for 5) hit better. That trio accounted for seven of their eight hits, with Jose Iglesias having the other.

But the at-bats throughout the lineup were generally longer and more judicious. The Padres walked four times, which is one fewer time than they had in the previous five games.

One of those walks was leading off the ninth inning by Merrill, who had been chasing bad pitches quite a bit during a 2-for-27 slump that spanned the six games before Thursday.

Sheets followed that with a home run just beyond the wall in right-center field to tie the game 4-4. His first homer, in the second inning, followed a Merrill single and put the Padres up 2-0.

The Padres had not gotten a hit with a runner in scoring position in their five games leading up to Thursday, a stretch of 32 fruitless at-bats. The streak was actually 33 going back to the final such at-bat in the game before the losing streak, and it grew to 39 before Arraez drove in the go-ahead run in the 10th inning.

The Padres bridged the gap between Stephen Kolek’s six innings, during which he allowed four runs (three earned) on seven hits and three walks, with relievers Yuki Matsui and Sean Reynolds.

That left them with their three highest-leverage arms at the ready after Sheets tied the game.

Jason Adam worked a scoreless ninth. But after Arraez’s single scored automatic runner Jose Iglesias in the top of the 10th, the Blue Jays scored off closer Robert Suarez in the bottom of the inning.

And after Sheets laced a single into center field to score Manny Machado in the top of the 11th, Daulton Varsho began the bottom of the inning with a triple off Jeremiah Estrada to tie the game 6-6.

An intentional walk to Addison Barger followed before Ernie Clement flied out to right field. Lukes then grounded a 99-mph full-count fastball just above the zone through the left side to score Varsho.

The Padres walked off the field in expressionless silence as the Blue Jays exulted in the infield.

But the visiting clubhouse did not have the funeral atmosphere it had after recent games.

“We’re fighting a lot today,” Arraez said. “We just need to continue to play hard. Man, we have a great team. Everybody knows we have a great team. We just need to continue to play baseball. … And the good thing, we got another opportunity tomorrow.”

Indeed, the Padres have 114 games remaining.

“Uncharted territory,” Mike Shildt said of the Padres’ first six-game losing streak since 2023, which predates his becoming Padres manager. “… Today is exactly how you get out of it. That’s just how this works. You play our game. … I really am confident that this is going to only make us stronger. There is no question about that. It will make us stronger. It doesn’t feel great right now. But, you know, very soon it’ll be a distant memory as we continue to get back to playing on the good side, the left-hand side of the win column. It’s just going to make us stronger, and it’ll make us closer.”