Padres go down early again, lose again to Orioles

There has been a fair amount of talk, in and around the Padres, about a lack of energy.

No concrete reason has been given except the theory that lack of results, both individually and collectively, have led to some dejection and that teams sometimes simply go through funks.

There is maybe also the fact that playing from behind sets a tone.

And the Padres have been playing from behind quite a bit.

Yu Darvish on Tuesday was the latest starting pitcher to put them in a hole early, and the Padres hardly put up a fight in a 6-2 loss to the Orioles.

The defeat, their seventh in the past nine games, sealed the Padres’ third straight series loss and their second in a row to a losing team. It also kept them 2½ games behind the Dodgers in the National League West and trimmed their lead to one game over the Mets in the battle for the final two NL wild-card spots.

“I think that’s the biggest start of it,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said of the Padres’ struggles lately. “It starts with, we need to be able to play with the lead (and) get to one of the strengths of the club, the bullpen and keep those pieces in the right order.”

A Padres starter has handed the bullpen a lead just three times in the past nine games.

The Padres’ offense is averaging a relatively robust 4.6 runs a game during that span. But Tuesday was the third game in a row in which they scored three or fewer runs.

“(Shooooot),” Fernando Tatis Jr. said, though the word he used had a different vowel in the middle. “It’s just not fun. Obviously, everybody knows that we need to play better, and we’re trying to find a solution right now. … We’re just down (in games), but we know we’re capable of coming back. So, you know, I feel like that’s the area that we need to focus more — how can we get it going together.”

Darvish needed a season-high 87 pitches to get into the fifth inning, and he failed to get an out once he was there.

For the sixth time in the past eight games started by a member of the rotation, a relief pitcher was in the game before the fifth inning was over.

After Darvish walked Jeremiah Jackson to start the fifth inning, Wandy Peralta came in and proceeded to get two outs that should have been three before being replaced by David Morgan, who yielded the second two-run single of the night to Samuel Basallo.

One of the runs was charged to Darvish and one to Peralta. Neither was earned, as an error by Jake Cronenworth had prolonged the inning.

Those two runs extended what had been a one-run Orioles lead to 5-2.

The bigger issue was the Orioles’ first three runs.

The Padres trailed 1-0 after one inning and 3-0 after three.

Tuesday was the 10th time in the past 15 games a Padres starting pitcher allowed at least two runs within the first three innings. That does not include the two runs allowed by reliever Kyle Hart in the third inning of Sunday’s bullpen game.

A Padres starter has allowed at least four runs in the first five innings six times in that span of 15 games. Another two times, they allowed three runs in the first five innings.

Padres starting pitchers have worked a total of 28 innings over their past seven starts. Counting the bullpen game, Padres relief pitchers have had to cover 44 innings over the past nine games.

The big-picture view shows an unsustainable pace for the bullpen, especially after it lost Jason Adam for the season after he ruptured the quad tendon in his left knee Monday.

The immediate issue is that a team cannot be expected to maintain any sort of winning trajectory when it is regularly behind at or near the start of games.

The Padres entered Tuesday with the best record in the major leagues in games in which their opponent scored first. But that record was 29-33.

Teams that score first are winning two-thirds of the time this season, which is on par with the average over the past decade.

To further illustrate how difficult it is to keep on coming back, a little more than a week ago the Padres were 28-28 in games they conceded at least the game’s first run. But they have lost six of the past seven games in which their opponent scored first.

No MLB team since the 2004 Giants has finished a season with a winning record in games in which its opponent scored first.

In this one, the Padres trailed from the second batter of the game when Jackson yanked an 0-2 sweeper over the wall in left field.

Darvish hit the next batter, Gunnar Henderson, with an 0-2 pitch and, after striking out Ryan Mountcastle on five pitches, hit Colton Cowser with an 0-1 pitch.

A walk loaded the bases before Darvish struck out Emmanuel Rivera on three pitches.

Darvish followed his 30-pitch first inning with a quick second before three singles led to the Orioles scoring twice in the third. Darvish got a break when Rivera tried to take an extra base on his two-run single and was thrown out at second to end the inning.

Freddy Fermín aided Darvish by throwing out Jackson Holliday trying to steal second base to end the fourth.

So, given the reality they are trailing so early so often, it should not be a surprise the Padres don’t look all that great.

Teams often appear from the outside to be flat when they are losing. It is the assessment from people on the inside that is interesting in this case, though even those closest to the situation can fall prey to equating a lack of results with a lack of energy when things are going poorly.

There certainly was excitement when Luis Arraez sent a pitch from Orioles starter Tyler Wells off the top of the wall in right field with Fermín on second base to make it 3-2 in the third inning.

But the Padres got just two more hits against Wells, who finished five innings in his first start back from Tommy John surgery.

They did walk their way into a possible rally in the seventh inning against Kade Strowd, loading the bases when Cronenworth walked to start the inning and Ryan O’Hearn and Fernando Tatis Jr. drew one-out walks. But Arraez struck out and Manny Machado grounded into a fielder’s choice.

The Orioles added a run against Alek Jacob in the eighth, and the Padres went down in order in the bottom of the eighth and had a leadoff baserunner erased by a double play in a three-batter ninth inning to end the game.

In the middle of a playoff chase, it simply is not a fun time to be a Padre.

“Frustrating for sure, but this is a group of guys that are going to keep competing,” Morgan said. “We’re not going to back down. We’re going to pull it around. We’re going to find a little more offense, a little more pitching out of the bullpen, be a little bit better. We all know it. We’re not afraid of it. … It gets a little quiet in here. But that’s just how it is. We’re competitors. We’re frustrated when we don’t come through. You can hear it a little bit, a little frustration, but we’re going to be all right.”

Their playoff chances still stand at 97.9%, according to FanGraphs. The lack of time for the Giants and Reds, who are the first two teams on the outside looking in and sit six games behind the Padres, is the biggest thing in the Padres’ favor.

But there is also a sense of urgency considering the goal is not to simply make the postseason.

“The biggest thing right now is we need to come together and figure it out,” Cronenworth said. “We’ve got 23 games left — the 23 most important games of the year. Need to figure out how to win each one, win a series and build off that.”