SAN DIEGO -- Less than a week into a season, no single loss can be considered crushing. Not even seeing a lead vanish in the bottom of the ninth inning on back-to-back home runs.

That happened to the D-backs on Monday night at Petco Park, when the Padres’ David Dahl and Ha-Seong Kim homered off Scott McGough to hand Arizona a 5-4 walk-off defeat in the opener of a two-game series.

“We got clipped for back-to-back home runs, and there’s not a thing we can do about it,” D-backs manager Torey Lovullo said. “We’ve got to move on and get ready for tomorrow.”

The fact that first pitch “tomorrow” comes only about 16 hours after the sudden reversal Monday will help Arizona forget about this loss quickly. So will a home run that happened two innings earlier.

Corbin Carroll, central to so much of the D-backs’ scoring in the early stages of 2023, hit his first home run of the season. It wasn’t the clutch factor that was so impressive -- the solo drive tied the game. It wasn’t the 105.7 mph exit velocity.

No, it was the sequence of the at-bat that exemplified why Carroll is the cornerstone of the D-backs’ future. Why he’s the No. 2 overall prospect in the MLB Pipeline rankings. Why the club backed its belief in Carroll with an eight-year, $111 million extension in his rookie season.

“He’s an exciting player,” Lovullo said. “He’s engaged. He’s following the game plan, and he can counterpunch any time. He’s not one-dimensional. He’s not just a speed guy that hits mistakes, and he hits a lot of baseballs in a lot of different areas.

“He follows baseball. However he’s being pitched, he’s going to put the barrel on it. He’s been very good so far.”

The 22-year-old Carroll certainly showed multiple dimensions in the seventh inning against Padres reliever Brent Honeywell Jr. The right-hander got two quick strikes with a changeup and a 94 mph fastball. Two more changeups came in low as the Padres tried to get Carroll to chase. No dice.

With the count now even, 2-2, Honeywell tried a change in elevation and speed. He reached back for a 94.5 heater above the zone, on the inner half of the plate. Many veteran batters will swing under that pitch. Carroll got a bat on it and fouled it back to stay alive.

Continuing to mix it up, Honeywell went back to his changeup, this time high and away. Carroll, a left-handed batter, pulled it to right field and just over the wall.

Nick Ahmed, a 10-year MLB veteran, was duly impressed in the on-deck circle.

“The guy was throwing a lot of offspeed, so to catch up to the [2-2] fastball and foul it off is impressive,” Ahmed said. “Even the home run he hit -- I looked at it on video after, and it was on the outside corner. To be able to create that length in the zone and to have the ability to adjust on that fastball and then hit that changeup in the air like he did is pretty impressive.”

Carroll was 3-for-4 Monday and scored twice. Through five games, he is tied for the team lead in hits (six) and runs (three) and has the solo lead in steals (three). His .889 OPS ranks second.

“He’s a good player, a very good player,” Lovullo said.