SAN DIEGO -- The Padres didn't acquire Rich Hill to be their ace. They don’t need Hill to carry them. They only need the veteran left-hander to shore up the back end of their rotation down the stretch this season.

Which means, simply put, they're going to need Hill to be better than he was in his Padres debut on Sunday.

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In an 8-2 loss to the Dodgers at Petco Park, Hill allowed six runs across three innings. He wasn't hit especially hard. But he allowed a two-run homer to Amed Rosario and a three-run drive to Freddie Freeman (and was perhaps done in by some rough batted-ball luck in between).

“I didn’t throw the ball well,” said Hill, whose first start with the Padres was shorter than all 22 with Pittsburgh this season. “Just overall, a horrible performance -- that’s it. There’s nothing to sugarcoat it or anything like that. It was crap. Get back to work tomorrow and get ready for the next one.”

With the loss, San Diego again failed to reach that elusive .500 mark, falling to 55-57 on the season. It has been almost three months -- May 11 to be exact -- since the Padres had as many wins as they had losses.

And yet, they find themselves squarely in the National League playoff picture. With 50 games left, the Padres need to make up only three games of ground in the Wild Card race. Given the talent on their roster, that should be eminently doable.

The tricky part? Actually doing it. Three of the four teams ahead of San Diego in the race for the final Wild Card spot lost on Sunday afternoon. Then the Padres took the field for Sunday Night Baseball and lost, too.

“We’ve come up against that .500 mark a couple times now,” Padres manager Bob Melvin said. “We’d like to be able to push through that and get on the other side of it. That’ll be a big hurdle for us. But we haven’t been able to.”

After the Padres found themselves in an early 6-0 hole, Gary Sánchez launched a mammoth home run off the first 'T' in "Western Metal Supply Co." painted atop the third level of the building. It was a titanic moonshot -- 433 feet down the line. It was also the only offense the Padres mustered against Lance Lynn.

Lynn, acquired by the Dodgers at the Deadline, entered play Sunday with a 6.32 ERA, the highest qualifying mark in the Majors. He proceeded to hold the San Diego offense in check across six innings. Unlike the night before, the Padres didn’t mount a charge against the Dodgers’ bullpen, either.

Hill, meanwhile, wasn’t nearly as effective for his new team. In the top of the first inning, he threw a belt-high fastball that Rosario sent a Statcast-projected 335 feet, into the Petco Porch in right. It marked the shortest home run distance at Petco Park this season, with an expected batting average of .080. Counts just the same.

“There’s tons of excuses that could be made,” Hill said. “The ball was hit. It [went] out.”

An inning later, Hill put two runners aboard when Austin Barnes dropped a squeeze bunt up the first-base line. Ji Man Choi charged and flipped home. Sánchez applied the tag. The runner was ruled out. … And then he was ruled safe upon review, as Sánchez was judged to have blocked the plate.

The Padres trailed by three. But more notably, it allowed Freeman to come to the plate later in the inning. At the end of a 10-pitch battle -- in which Freeman looked at a 2-2 curveball just off the outside corner -- he launched a three-run homer to break the game open.

“They made him throw some pitches, made him work,” Melvin said. “But it ended up being two swings of the bat for five of the six runs. … Advantageous, when they hit the homers. Not his best stuff, but they made him work and had a couple big swings.”

After Hill’s exit, right-hander Pedro Avila pitched 4 2/3 excellent relief innings. He struck out seven and allowed just one run -- and perhaps earned a bigger place in the Padres’ future pitching plans.

Those plans remain somewhat murky, given the current injuries to Joe Musgrove and Michael Wacha. Hill’s arrival was supposed to alleviate some of that concern. But his introduction did not go as planned.

“Obviously that doesn’t sit well with me,” Hill said. “I expect much better performance out of myself moving forward.”