Pirates' slide continues vs. Padres: 'We just have to play better'

SAN DIEGO -- Luis Ortiz got the ground ball he sorely needed, turned and fired to second base for what should have been the start of the double play, but Oneil Cruz couldn’t squeeze it. Instead of being almost out of the jam, the bases were now loaded, and the Padres would get an unearned run in the first inning on Tuesday on a Manny Machado sacrifice fly.

The play felt like a microcosm of what the last week and a half of Pirates baseball has been: so close to the break they need, but falling just short. Call it bad luck, not executing, whatever. That error and unearned run would set the pace for the Pirates’ ninth straight loss, this time a 3-0 defeat at the hands of the Padres at Petco Park.

"He dropped a double-play ball,” manager Derek Shelton said. “He's got to catch that ball. That's a routine play. Louie did a good job. He was struggling early, he got a ground ball and that's a ball that's got to be caught."

Cruz’s error was hardly the only Pirates miscue of the night. Bryan De La Cruz’s bobble in the eighth ended up leading to a big insurance run, also unearned. Padres starter Michael King struck out 10, and the Pirates struck out 15 times in all, marking the fifth time in their last 15 games that they struck out for at least half of their outs that night. They also went 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position, squandering chances and their nine hits on the night.

While pitching was the concern at the start of the losing streak, it’s the bats that have gone cold of late, with Tuesday being the third time in the last four games the offense has been held to one or zero runs.

"We've got to have better at-bats,” Shelton said. “We've got to have better at-bats with runners in scoring position. … We had some opportunities. We had some opportunities last night. We've just not been capitalizing on them."

It also wasted Ortiz’s bounce-back performance after being shaky his previous three outings, including his last time out against the Padres on Thursday, when he was tagged early and allowed four runs. Pitching on regular four days' rest for the first time as a starter this season, Ortiz needed to lean on his sinker more after walking and plunking the first two batters of the game. He wound up turning in five strong innings of three-hit ball, with the only other run coming on a David Peralta solo shot to open the fifth.

"Not to fall behind, for sure,” Ortiz said, via interpreter and coach Stephen Morales, on what that first start against the Padres taught him. “That's the biggest thing. That and attacking the strike zone."

Those runs were more than enough for King, whose fastball was on point. As Shelton would point out, he threw the heavy sinker in to right-handers and then front-doored the pitch to left-handers. That kept the offense off balance before the three-headed bullpen monster of Jason Adam, Tanner Scott and Robert Suarez shut things down.

“He executed pitches throughout the whole thing,” Shelton said. “As we talked about, even when we were back to when we were in Pittsburgh, you get into their bullpen and you're going to see electric stuff, and we did."

That left the Pirates with nine losses in a row and a 56-63 record on the year. They will have their rotation’s leader, Mitch Keller, on the mound on Wednesday, trying to salvage one game from this road trip to California.

Shelton’s message to his club is the same as it was when the road trip started.

“We've got to keep going,” Shelton said. “We're in a tough stretch right now. We're playing good teams and we're not playing good enough to win. And we just have to play better."