ANAHEIM—
Before it got worse, the Padres talked about how it must get better.
They could not continue to fail in the way they were against the teams they were.
“These games are probably going to come and haunt us,” Manny Machado said Wednesday afternoon.
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Even though he repeated that precise phrase several times, he was not suggesting the Padres were finished. They do remain in playoff position, and there are 97 games remaining.
Machado was, however, expressing a conviction the Padres need to be finished with the kind of series that transpired here, concluding with a 3-2 loss Wednesday night and a three-game sweep at the hands of one of baseball’s bottom dwellers.
The Angels are a big-league team. The Padres complimented some of their pitchers and praised various aspects of how the team with baseball’s third-worst record had outplayed them in the biggest moments.
But they seemed to have had enough with the justifications.
“We play good against good teams, and we play bad against teams with bad records,” Jake Cronenworth said Wednesday afternoon. “It can’t happen. We’ve done it in the past, same thing. We need to find a way to switch that. … These are series we need to win.”
A few hours later, the Padres were readying to head down the freeway toward San Diego not only wondering what had just happened but unsure how long they would be without Machado, who limped off the field in the fourth inning after pulling up following a fielder’s choice grounder.
Machado suffered a mild strain of the right hip flexor, manager Mike Shildt said, and is considered day-to-day. While the injury did not appear debilitating, the Padres did suffer the grave insult of being the Angels’ first home sweep this season after a night earlier becoming the first visiting team to lose a series at Angel Stadium in 2024.
The loss, the Padres’ fourth in a row, dropped them to 15-20 against teams with records of .500 or below (including a 13-19 mark against teams with losing records). It also made them a losing team, at 32-33.
They are 17-13 against winning teams. They have won series against two of the three division leaders in the National League. They have won series against two second-place teams.
With this series and one last month at home against the Rockies, the Padres have now been swept by two of the teams with MLB’s four worst records.
They are confounding. Even to themselves.
Asked if he thought the impediment against teams with losing records was a mental issue, Jurickson Profar said: “I think so, yes. We do a lot of things to lose.”
Indeed, if this series does end up haunting the Padres, who currently are in playoff position in what has so far been a highly mediocre National League, the five-pitch top of the first inning will live in infamy.
Luis Arraez started the game by lining a single into right field. Fernando Tatis Jr. followed by hitting a high chopper down the third base line. The ball short-hopped Angels third baseman Luis Rengifo, bouncing off his glove and rolling toward the Angels dugout. With no one immediately covering third base but with Padres third base coach Tim Leiper holding up his hands to signal “stop,” Arraez rounded second and tried to take third. Shortstop Zach Neto quickly made the sprint to cover the bag, and Rengifo’s throw easily beat Arraez.
Instead of two on and no outs, the Padres had a man on first with one out., And two pitches later, the inning was over when Machado hit into a double play.
Five pitches later, the Angels had a lead when lead-off hitter Nolan Schanuel launched a slider Dylan Cease hung in the upper middle portion of the strike zone over the wall in right field.
The Angels’ lead was 3-0 after a one-out single by Logan O’Hoppe and a two-out homer by Neto in the second inning.
Angels starter José Soriano, who had allowed four runs in each of his previous two starts, allowed just two baserunners between the second and fifth innings.
It was in the fourth, after the second of Tatis’ four singles that Machado was injured. He said he felt the discomfort in his hip while running. He made it past first base before bending over at the waist and being quickly joined by head athletic trainer Mark Rogow and Shildt.
“We’ll see how I feel,” Machado said. “I’m sore right now. We’ll see how I wake up. That’s always the indicator, the next day. ... I felt good enough to stay. Shildt told me it’s not smart to push it. Roges was saying the same thing. I was ready to continue and push through it. They made the executive decision to be smart, get ahead of it, not make it worse.”
In the sixth, the team behind him gave a glimpse as to how it is still 16 games under .500, even after winning the past three days.
After Luis Campusano began the inning with a line drive single to left field that ended his hitless steak at 29 at-bats, Arraez followed with a double grounded down the line that Angels left fielder Taylor Ward fielded and threw to Neto, who turned and threw it to the empty space between home and first base. That allowed Campusano to run home and Arraez to advance to third. A single by Tatis scored Arraez before three consecutive outs ended the threat and the scoring for the night.
The Padres had a runner on second with one out in the seventh and no outs in the eighth and failed to score.
Wednesday followed a similar pattern in this series, as they failed to execute late in close games.
“I don’t think we’ve played down,” Cronenworth said. “We just haven’t taken advantage of the opportunities in the games we get against teams that are under 500. It seems like when we’re playing good teams that are over .500 — first-place teams, second-place teams, teams that go all the way to the playoffs — when there are chances late in the games, it seems like we’re capitalizing on them, scoring those runs we need to score, executing in those situation. It seems against the teams that we should have the lead going late in the game or we have that opportunity late, we’re not getting those runs in. I don’t know what that is. … Maybe it’s a little more heightened focus in those moments.”
Machado continued to maintain that eventually the opportunities will lead to more consistent victories.
“We’re creating the opportunities,” he said before the game. “... We just aren’t cashing in, which hopefully that doesn’t hurt in the long haul.”
But this series did virtually nothing to provide confidence.
“It’s a blow,” Machado said afterward. “Definitely sucks. We’re going to have to turn the page and hopefully turn this thing around tomorrow back home.”
