Padres leave St. Louis on a losing note, split four-game series – San Diego Union-Tribune

ST. LOUIS — Four games. Four days.

That is what remains in a stretch of 18 games in 18 days.

Go back 23 days from Thursday, and the Padres have played on all but one of them.

And 15 of those 22 games have been close late, which means they have been stressful, with no more than two runs separating the teams at some point in the final two innings.

That included Thursday’s 4-1 loss to the Cardinals in the finale of a four-game series played in the dirty August heat of eastern Missouri.

“Super hot,” Luis Arraez said. “This is not for humans. But we have to play. We always compete.”

As the dog days of summer are taking their bite, the Padres are focused on that — just continuing to play as they have. Results like the past two days — just their second time in a span of 36 games that they have lost consecutive contests — are inevitable.

They will also take some help, as they got Thursday when the Mets beat the Diamondbacks. That kept the Padres just one game behind the Diamondbacks in the race for the National League’s top wild-card spot.

The Padres, who averaged 5½ runs and nearly 10 hits a game over their previous 35 games, managed three hits Thursday against Cardinals starter Sonny Gray (12-9, 3.96) and none against the three relievers who followed.

“I just love the way our guys went about this whole series,” manager Mike Shildt said. “… You don’t have to win to have heart. These guys battled their tails off, man. These guys posted and gave us everything they had every day. Tough environment, a little bit. No excuses, but … I just can’t discount it. Again, we normalize, regardless of circumstance. But also tip of the hat. These were extenuating circumstances. The conditions were rough, and our guys … effort level there, fight, desire, heart. Just came out on the short end, but it’s got to be appreciated, at least from my seat, the level of commitment these guys have.”

In their sweat-soaked jerseys, the Padres were within a run after six innings and down just two at the start of the seventh.

Jackson Merrill worked an eight-pitch walk with two outs in the seventh and David Peralta followed with a 10-pitch walk, bringing Kyle Higashioka to the plate as the potential go-ahead run. He hit a flyout down the left field line.

Higashioka’s ground-rule double with one out in the third is what had stopped Gray’s streak of seven batters retired to start the game.

Gray would get the final two outs of that inning and the first out of the fourth before the Padres again had a runner at second with one out on Jake Cronenworth’s double.

That was also followed by two outs. But before Gray could get the first out of the fifth inning, Merrill jumped on his first pitch of the inning and laced it 419 feet to the berm beyond center field for his 20th home run of the season, which cut the Cardinals’ lead to 2-1.

The Cardinals scored those first two runs runs off Michael King in the third inning after a potential double play grounder resulted instead in runners at second and third with no outs.

King walked Alec Burleson to start the inning, and Nolan Arenado followed with a fairly hard one-hop grounder hit directly at Tyler Wade, who was starting at shortstop for the first time in eight days. The ball bounced just before reaching Wade, got up on him and went off his glove and into left field.

Wade fielded a grounder by the next batter, Luken Baker, and threw him out at first as Burleson scored. After a groundout by Brendan Donovan, Paul Goldschmidt drove in Arenado with a double.

King stranded a runner at second in the fourth and retired Arenado to start the fifth before running into the trouble that would end his day.

He walked Baker and yielded a double to Donovan. Goldschmidt, who to that point was 8-for-13 in the series, was in the batter’s box when Shildt emerged from the dugout holding up four fingers to signal an intentional walk while heading to the mound.

Matsui entered with the bases loaded and one down, and he got the inning’s second out on a Lars Nootbaar fly ball to left field that was too shallow to advance the runner from third and on the next pitch got Iván Herrera on a pop-up to first.

Matsui also got the first out in the sixth before Cardinals rookie Masyn Winn yanked a home run down the left-field line to put the Cardinals back up by two. They added a run off Adrián Morejón in the eighth.

The Padres will gladly play indoors the next three days in Tampa Bay, then head home for one game against the Tigers. That series will be interrupted by an off day Tuesday before its final two games against Detroit and then three against the Giants, also at home.

There will be just 21 days remaining in the season at that point, and the Padres will play just 17 times in that closing stretch.

“Everybody calls it Angry August, because it’s just like, you’re not in the playoff push yet, you’re mostly in the heat, and it’s that almost lull of the baseball season,” King said. “So I think everybody always looks forward to September, because now it’s like crunch time. And then us having to go 18 in a row at the end of August is a little test of our endurance. But I think … it’ll be a very fun September.”

Originally Published: August 29, 2024 at 1:58 p.m.