Padres blanked at Coors Field, suffer fifth straight loss

DENVER — Only two pitchers have more losses than Kyle Freeland. Few have given up more hits. He’d lead the majors in traffic allowed if he’d logged enough innings.

But Kyle Freeland is still fighting, as the Giants’ Rafael Devers was reminded this week.

The Padres?

The jury is still out.

The Rockies’ embattled left-hander tied a career-high with 10 strikeouts over eight shutout innings, Nick Pivetta wasn’t quite good enough in his best start yet at Coors Field and a 3-0 blanking sent a lackluster Padres to a fifth straight loss on Friday to start this three-game trip.

“How can you have energy if you can’t even make it to first base,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said after his ninth-inning single was erased on Manny Machado’s game-ending double play via a tapper to third. “I don’t think we’re lacking energy. The boys are trying to play their best. That’s just part of the game. Some people like it, some people not. When you’re on the field every single day and you play baseball for a long season, teams are going to go through that stretch.

“And that’s just baseball.”

It is, and these Padres have endured an even longer skid than this one — a six-gamer back in May.

But this one is at the hands of sub-.500 teams that sold at the trade deadline and this loss in particular is the worst in this skid.

After all, the 101-loss Rockies are officially the only team already eliminated from postseason contention, their minus-361 run differential is the worst by an MLB team since 1900 and the Padres had outscored them 53-18 in winning five of the first six meetings this season.

The only positive to take away from a chilly, uneventful night at Coors Field was the Dodgers losing their fourth game in a row on a walk-off to the pesty Orioles.

The Padres remain two games back in the NL West, but they’re now tied with the Mets for the second/third wild-card spot, five games behind the Cubs.

Meantime, the Giants, winners of five straight, are lurking just four games behind that small logjam.

“We haven’t been able to put any consistency of how you win games together in a couple of different areas,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said. “… Nick was fantastic tonight. He was great. Pitched extremely well. Solo homer. They scratched a run. Gave us a quality six innings. Two runs. Did more than his part to give us a chance. You know, excellent, quality start.

“We’ve just got to pair that with some more offense. And, you know, play the game a little more cleaner consistently.”

Coors Field had been a personal house of horrors for Pivetta, who carried a 17.36 ERA in four appearances into Friday’s start.

So a quality start — the Padres’ first since Pivetta on Aug. 24 — was a victory even in the loss.

He threw 66 of his 99 pitches for strikes, struck out five and allowed two runs on seven hits and two walks over six innings.

Three soft singles opened up a 2-0 lead on Pivetta in the fifth. The hardest hit that he gave up was Hunter Goodman’s 105 mph homer on a 1-1 fastball dotted on out outside corner in the third inning.

“I think it’s just Coors Field,” Pivetta said, “and that’s how it goes. I think he’s a good hitter, but I’ve had good success against him in the past.”

After Pivetta’s exit, David Morgan allowed a run-scoring double in the seventh to Goodman, who finished a triple shy of the cycle. The last time the Padres faced the Rockies in May, Goodman, the Rockies’ lone All-Star, finished a single shy of the cycle.

Freeland was working on two days rest.

Kinda.

He threw just eight pitches on Tuesday when he was ejected for his part in inciting a benches-clearing incident with the Giants. The 32-year-old veteran took issue with Devers’ taking his time getting up the first base line while admiring a home run.

He looked plenty rested by the time he climbed the mound again Friday, retiring 13 in a row before Ramón Laureano’s fifth-inning double and then 10 more in a row before Jose Iglesias’ two-out single in the eighth gave the Padres just their second base runner.

“He was consistently in the zone, attacking every hitter,” said Padres catcher Elias Díaz, Freeland’s batterymate during his days in Colorado. “His secondary pitches were amazing. We were chasing the cutter. He had a really big night. … He competes whenever he’s on the mound. He’s a guy who’s going to compete no matter how. He’s going to give 100 percent.”

Freeland escaped the eighth without further damage and was at just 88 pitches when interim manager Warren Schaeffer asked closer Victor Vodnik to finish the game.

He did, but only after walking pinch-hitter Luis Arraez and allowing a single to Tatis to bring the tying run to the plate.

But Ryan O’Hearn flied out to left and Machado bounced into a double-play to end a game in which the Padres managed just four baserunners and didn’t, as Shildt saw it unfold, make in-game adjustments while Freeland was still on the mound.

“I guess the fastball was looking different to some guys and the slider had a little different shape than we were used to,” Shildt said. “He threw the ball well, controlled the counts. The discouraging part was just the lack of adjustments as the game went. We tip our hat, but … we talk about being better as the game goes and we just didn’t make the adjustments necessary to be able to get more consistent traffic, consistent at bats and be able to do anything to shorten his outing.”

Tatis didn’t go that far.

The story of the game as far as he was concerned was Freeland and not anything the Padres weren’t adjusting to.

You know what they say about good pitching.

“Located his pitches,” Tatis said. “Umpire (had a) big zone and (Freeland) didn’t really give anything in the heart of the plate, so there’s not much you can do on that.”