(Extra) frustrating and familiar: Padres fall in 10

ST. LOUIS -- The Padres are on the precipice of making history. Just not the type they expected to be making this season.

On Tuesday night at Busch Stadium, San Diego dropped another game in extra innings, this one a 6-5 loss to the Cardinals at Busch Stadium. Willson Contreras launched a game-tying, two-run homer off Robert Suarez in the eighth. Tommy Edman swatted a walk-off single into the left-field corner off Josh Hader in the 10th. That was that. The Padres trudged toward their dugout while an opponent celebrated a walkoff. It all felt too familiar.

Eleven times this season the Padres have gone to extra innings. Inexplicably, they have lost all 11.

“We haven’t been able to push through in those types of games unfortunately,” said Padres manager Bob Melvin. “Tonight was another one.”

With the defeat, the Padres find themselves one extra-inning loss from equaling a longstanding record held by the 1969 Montreal Expos, who went 0-12 in extras. Those Expos are the only team to lose 12 straight extra-innings games in a season. They’re the only team to finish with a worse extra-innings record than these Padres.

Consider the sheer improbability of the Padres’ struggles in extras this year. In theory, the institution of an automatic runner on second base beginning in the 10th inning should only add to the volatility of such games.

If each extra-innings game were a tossup, the likelihood of any team losing 11 straight is 1 in 2,048. Then again, if you’ve watched the Padres struggle situationally this season, you know these losses aren’t coin-flips gone wrong.

“It’s attention to details,” said Fernando Tatis Jr. “I feel like whoever makes the first mistake in those games is going to lose. Whoever doesn’t perform the right way -- that the game asks to play at that moment -- is going to lose.”

The 1969 Expos were an expansion team that finished 52-110. Only one other team has ever lost 11 straight extra-innings games in a season. The 2012 Astros, who finished 55-107, snapped their skid with an extra-innings win in their 12th try.

These Padres, needless to say, should not be in the same grouping as the 1969 Expos and the 2012 Astros, two of the sport’s worst all-time teams. They have a roster loaded with stars, and they’ve mostly lingered around the fringes of the Wild Card race this season, despite a 6-21 record in one-run games.

And that’s the maddening part. The season is slipping away. They’re 7 1/2 games out of the final playoff spot with only 29 left to play. If they were, say, 14-13 instead in those one-run games, they’d occupy a place in the playoffs if the season ended today.

“It’s frustrating,” said right-hander Seth Lugo, who allowed three runs (two earned) over six innings. “I don’t know what else to say beyond that. You want to win those games, and we haven’t been able to really do that all season long. So it puts us in the position we’re in now.

“We’ve got to turn the page, and we’ve got to keep fighting. Nothing else we can do.”

The Padres are hitting just .160 in extra innings this season with only two extra-base hits. Their only extra-innings homer came off the bat of Manny Machado in a game they already trailed by four runs.

“You can’t help but know what has transpired this year,” Melvin said. “It takes pushing through. Obviously we didn’t today, again, and it keeps going.”

As they have in so many of these losses, the Padres could again lament the fact that the game reached extras in the first place. They got remarkable contributions from their bench players, inserted at the bottom of their starting lineup.

Luis Campusano homered and scored twice. Matthew Batten notched a career-high four hits, plus a walk. José Azocar had two hits and gave the Padres the lead in the fourth with a two-run single.

But the middle of the San Diego lineup mostly struggled. The big four of Juan Soto, Machado, Tatis and Xander Bogaerts finished 3-for-18, including 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position.

And still, the Padres led by two runs, when Suarez -- who had blown fastballs past Contreras at 99 and 100 mph -- hung a middle-middle slider. Contreras launched it 427 feet to straightaway center field for his second homer of the game.

The Padres were headed to extras again. The result would be maddeningly familiar.