MINNEAPOLIS -- Last September, with the Padres underperforming and fighting for their playoff lives, the trajectory of their season turned drastically when -- as several players would later put it -- “Bob got mad.”

With expectations raised significantly and his team once again underperforming, Padres manager Bob Melvin got mad a lot earlier this year. May 11 in Minnesota, to be precise.

It’s extremely uncommon for Melvin, a veteran of two decades in the managerial chair, to get animated with his team. He almost always prefers to take the big-picture view. But after another afternoon of squandered opportunities in a 5-3 loss to the Twins at Target Field on Thursday, Melvin addressed his players after the game.

Those in the clubhouse wouldn’t acknowledge the specifics of his message. But given Melvin’s tone in his media session shortly thereafter, it wasn’t all that hard to glean.

“We’ve got to perform better,” Melvin began, clearly heated. “That’s what we have to do. … We have guys that can perform better, and we’re going to. But it’s time to quit just talking about it. It's time to go out there and do it. Another frustrating game for us. Underperforming.”

So how exactly does that change? What can the Padres do about their MLB-worst .203 batting average with men in scoring position? What needs to change for this offense -- a juggernaut on paper -- to stop squandering so many opportunities?

That’s when Melvin raised the stakes, as fiery as he’s been after a game since at least last September in Arizona (when he called out his team prior to its strong finish and run to the NLCS).

“We’ve just got to fight a little harder and expect a little bit more out of ourselves,” said Melvin, who earned his 55th career ejection for arguing balls and strikes in the eighth. “All of us. Myself included. We have not done that to this point. These stretches happen, but it’s gone on too long. We’ve got to break through here at some point.”

The sooner, the better. The Padres sit 19-19, headed to Los Angeles for a pivotal three-game series against the Dodgers. The gap in the National League West race has already grown to four games. If there were ever a time for a message like Melvin’s to get through, it’s right now.

And, shortly afterward, Melvin’s players echoed his sentiment precisely.

“I agree 100 percent on everything that he said today,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said. “We have been saying too much how it’s going to come, it’s going to come. But we’ve got to make it happen. None of this, ‘It’s going to come.’ I feel like everybody here in this clubhouse is good enough to make it happen. It’s up to us to hold ourselves accountable.”

Xander Bogaerts put it more simply: “We need to play better.”

There were signs of that on Wednesday. Tatis led off the game with a first-pitch homer. Rougned Odor put the Padres on top 3-2 in the fifth with his first of the season. But what ensued felt all too familiar. An overtaxed San Diego bullpen surrendered the lead in the seventh. The Padres loaded the bases in the eighth, before Trent Grisham struck out to end it.

In the ninth, the Padres needed to put one man aboard to turn the lineup back over to Tatis. Matt Carpenter grounded out before Odor and Nelson Cruz struck out. San Diego -- expected to have perhaps the sport’s best offense -- has scored 157 runs, tied for 23rd in the Majors.

“You can only rest on the baseball card for so long,” Carpenter said. “You’ve got to go out and make it happen. That’s kind of where we’re at. Yeah, we’re not panicking. We know what we have in here. But at the same time, eventually you’ve got to go out and prove it. Enough talking.”

The Padres finished 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position. They were victims of some tough batted-ball luck -- Manny Machado in particular had two crucial hits robbed by Nick Gordon and Michael A. Taylor in center field. But Machado wasn’t about to fall back on that hard contact.

“They’ve got to fall,” Machado said. “Plain and simple. [We’ve] got to execute with runners in scoring position.”

The Padres won’t have to wait long to prove themselves. Their pivotal series at Dodger Stadium begins Friday with Blake Snell vs. Dustin May -- a rematch of Saturday, a game in which San Diego’s offense also failed to convert numerous opportunities.

As mid-May series go, the Padres sure seem to have a lot riding on this one. Especially considering the way the stakes were raised on Thursday.

“Of course there’s urgency,” Tatis said. “We’ve just got to play better, period … whoever we’re playing next, but especially now we’re playing the Dodgers in a divisional-series game. They’re very important. So we better step ... up.”