This story was excerpted from AJ Cassavell’s Padres Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Juan Soto’s bat flip hung in the air for three full seconds. It made six rotations. Soto had just launched a towering three-run homer to give San Diego a ninth-inning lead at Dodger Stadium -- precisely the type of swing that has eluded the Padres all season. So, this one felt particularly cathartic.

“Feels great, man,” Soto said. “I will say, I love those big moments. I love to be up there. ... Even if I miss, I always want to be up there.”

The reality is: It’s almost certainly too little, too late for the Padres. They appear destined to fall short of the lofty goals they set for themselves this season. And the biggest reason why? Because they’ve lost so many games like this one.

“We haven’t seen that in a while,” said manager Bob Melvin. “And I’ve said often that we have the ability to do that. It was nice to be able to come back after being down big. … It’s something we’ve been lacking.”

In some ways, a win like this -- at this point in the season -- felt a bit cruel. The Padres’ record in late-and-close situations has been re-hashed ad nauseam. They’re 0-11 in extra innings, 6-22 in one-run games and 19-41 in one-or-two-run games. Not only was Monday’s win the largest comeback win of the season, but it marked only the seventh time this year they had overcome a deficit of at least two runs.

“At the end of the day, it wasn’t that we didn’t want it to happen earlier in the season,” Soto said. “We’ve just got to follow through it. We’re learning a lot from this year, and we keep grinding. We keep fighting.”

Credit the Padres with that much at least. Their season appears destined to end earlier than they’d ever anticipated. Yet, they’re clearly still playing hard, clinging to the notion that -- mathematically -- they’re still alive.

And for one night, they looked like the team they always thought they could be. In fact, this game felt like a version of what I think we all expected from the NL West race this season.

Back and forth they went. The Padres jumped in front early. The Dodgers answered. The Dodgers grabbed a lead. The Padres answered. The Dodgers plated five in the third. The Padres scored five to tie it by the top of the sixth.

When Soto’s homer landed in the right-field pavilion, it evoked memories of San Diego’s stunning upset last October. It also brought a moment of recognition that, had the Padres just won a few more games like this one, they’d be setting themselves up for a similar run this October.

And that’s the cruel part.

“It just is what it is,” Melvin said. “I’ve said often that we have the ability to do that, and we have the length of the lineup to do it, and we just haven’t done it. But it was nice to do it tonight.”