Padres 'a little unlucky' on hard-hit action

SAN DIEGO -- Really, this wasn't about what happened on Thursday night. What happened Thursday night was perfectly excusable.

Zac Gallen, one of the game's best pitchers, held the Padres to one run over 6 1/3 innings. Two of the D-backs’ three hits were home runs, one of which was the shortest out-of-the-park homer Statcast has ever tracked at Petco Park. The Padres, meanwhile, were stung by brutal batted-ball luck all night. They scorched 12 hard-hit outs (at least 95 mph off the bat), tied for the second most in any game in the Majors this year.

If their season was going as planned, the Padres could simply write off Thursday’s 3-1 loss to the D-backs as another strange night in a strange sport.

But their season has not gone as planned. And that's why this wasn’t about Thursday. This was about the 4 1/2 months leading up to it -- 4 1/2 months that have left the Padres with so little room for error that they can’t really afford nights like this one.

“Pretty frustrating,” said Padres manager Bob Melvin. “I mean, I never say unlucky. But we were a little unlucky tonight with as many hard-hit balls as we had.”

The loss dropped the Padres five games back of a Wild Card spot in the National League. They sit four back of Arizona with three critical games looming. Not only can the Padres gain ground directly on one of the teams they’re chasing, but the head-to-head tiebreaker hangs in the balance as well, with the season series tied at five and no games remaining between these two clubs beyond this weekend.

“We have three more,” said shortstop Xander Bogaerts. “I'm not saying we have a lot of time; I'd be lying. But three more games, gotta take it one at a time. Zac Gallen ain't throwing tomorrow. He ain't throwing again. So if we do the same thing [as] today, it'll probably even out.”

Hard to argue with that logic. If the Padres swing like they did on Thursday against lesser starting pitchers, they’ll put themselves in position to win a few games. Thing is, their offense has been anything but consistent this year.

Nonetheless, the Padres are vowing to carry their recent momentum from consecutive wins over the Orioles into the rest of this series. They said they wouldn’t get too caught up in Thursday’s loss. Heck, the postgame clubhouse even played light music, a rarity after losses.

“It’s one that you move on, and you don’t hang your head over,” Melvin said. “You move on to the next day. Because that’s one of the best pitchers in the National League, who has given us a tough time, and I thought our approach was as good as we’ve had off him.”

Opposite Gallen, Padres starter Rich Hill found his own share of rough luck across five innings of three-run ball. He retired the first 10 hitters he faced, but after he walked Corbin Carroll with one out in the fourth, his next pitch was a fastball to Tommy Pham that caught too much plate. Pham launched a two-run homer into the visitors' bullpen.

An inning later, Gabriel Moreno swatted a Hill curveball 329 feet down the right-field line into the shortest part of Petco’s porch. It would’ve been a homer in only one other ballpark -- Yankee Stadium, known for its short right-field porch.

“Whether it should’ve went out or not, regardless, it went out,” Hill said. “We hit the ball well. I thought we swung the bat really well, and unfortunately just came out on the short end. It’s a frustrating loss, because this is a team we need to beat, and it’s crunch time. Again, it falls on me.”

Pedro Avila relieved Hill with four scoreless innings. Meanwhile, the Padres continued to lace line drive after line drive into D-backs gloves. Bogaerts had two. So did Luis Campusano. Ha-Seong Kim and Fernando Tatis Jr. had deep fly balls tracked down at the warning track in the first. Manny Machado had one in the eighth.

The Padres waited and waited for their batted-ball luck to turn, and it never did.

“A lot of losses hurt, to be honest, some more than others,” Bogaerts said. “Tonight is one where I feel like when you put your head on the pillow, you can sleep a little better than most nights. Because: What more do you want us to do?”