ATLANTA -- As early-April baseball games go, the Padres and Braves staged a classic on Thursday night at Truist Park -- a back-and-forth slugfest full of punches and their requisite counterpunches. 

These two National League heavyweights will play three more times in Atlanta this weekend. They'll play three times in San Diego later this month. And then? Well, that's it for these two teams in 2023.

Unless...

OK, OK, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's just call this what it was: A very good baseball game between two very good baseball teams -- a game the Braves rallied to win, 7-6 in the bottom of the ninth inning when Orlando Arcia laced a walk-off single off right-hander Nabil Crismatt.

“When you play really good teams, that’s one of the things -- it’s back-and-forth,” said Padres first baseman Jake Cronenworth. “It’s teams taking the lead, losing the lead. We’ve got to execute at the end there.”

For eight innings, the game seesawed. The Braves jumped in front. The Padres answered with Matt Carpenter’s three-run homer. The Braves took another lead, chasing Blake Snell in the fourth. The Padres, again, answered – this time with Cronenworth’s game-tying homer in the sixth and a pair of small-ball runs in the eighth.

Then, it unraveled. For the third straight game, a late lead evaporated by way of the San Diego bullpen.

“We’ll keep working ‘til we get it right,” said Padres manager Bob Melvin. “Right now, we haven’t been able to close it out.”

It’s no secret: The Padres are undermanned in their bullpen. Robert Suarez and Drew Pomeranz, two key late-inning weapons, opened the season on the injured list. Joining them are Adrian Morejon and José Castillo, two lefties with electric upside.

The Padres are also currently employing a six-man rotation, leaving them shorter than they’d like in the ‘pen. It doesn’t help that nearly every game they’ve played this season has been decided late.

“Limited with what we could do in the bullpen today,” Melvin said. “We just can’t get to [closer Josh] Hader right now. But other positive things, we did. … We were on the other side of it and came back. Next thing you know, we have a lead [in] the eighth.”

The bullpen issues cannot be ignored. Neither can the tribulations of Snell, who has posted a 7.88 ERA through two starts and was removed after he walked three straight Braves to relinquish the lead. Really, those two issues were linked directly on Thursday; the Padres’ bullpen desperately needed more length from Snell.

But, as Melvin noted, there was an awful lot to like from Thursday’s performance. They made Spencer Strider, one of the toughest pitchers in the league, work hard. His night was done after five.

Defensively, the Padres made a trio of highlight-reel gems. Xander Bogaerts made a diving stop that became a double play in the third. Cronenworth made an over-the-shoulder grab as he crashed into the wall in the sixth. Juan Soto kept the game tied with an outstanding diving catch to rob Ozzie Albies of a hit in the eighth.

It all went for naught.

With a fried bullpen, Melvin turned to Crismatt for the ninth. Crismatt, of course, is not the first choice for that spot. He’s the Padres’ long man, their innings-eater. He’s also struggled early this season, having allowed six runs in three appearances.

But what option did Melvin have? Luis García and Brent Honeywell were unavailable, having been overexerted in Tuesday’s loss. Hader is fresh, but the Padres won’t use him for multiple innings – and, if they were going to win, they were going to need to cover multiple innings. With the bottom of the Braves' lineup due in the ninth, Crismatt got the call.

He recorded the first two outs before Eddie Rosario hit a double. Arcia followed by swatting at a fastball that was well off the outside corner. He smacked it into center field, and Rosario raced home.

“Today, to be honest with you, was the best day I’ve felt out there,” Crismatt said. “I’m really happy for that. I’m going home with my head up, because that’s baseball. Some days you have to give it to them. He hit a good pitch that was out of the zone. That was the pitch that I was confident to throw. … I just tip the hat to the hitter.”

When it was over, Melvin could only reflect on the roller coaster thusly:

“They just got one more big hit later in the game than we did,” he said.

An Opening Week classic. Six more of these on the horizon this month. And – who knows? – perhaps a few more, with higher stakes, come autumn.