Key takeaways: Brewers 7, Padres 1

MILWAUKEE -- Gavin Sheets’ dramatic ninth-inning home run on Wednesday was the only thing standing between the Padres and being swept in Milwaukee this week.

San Diego dropped its series finale against the Brewers on Thursday, 7-1 -- on a day when Griffin Canning struggled and the offense was nowhere to be found until the ninth inning, when Nick Castellanos scored an unearned run on Sung-Mun Song's force out.

Here are some takeaways from American Family Field, where the Padres lost their first road series of the season:

Starting slow

The late drama has been remarkable. The Padres have staged all manner of comeback victories this season -- including Wednesday night.

Ideally, however, they wouldn’t be in a position to need to come back so dang often.

Wednesday was an extreme example. San Diego allowed three runs in the first and three more in the second. It proved too big a hole to climb out of and exposed what’s become one of the Padres’ biggest issues this season: their slow starts.

In the first three innings of games, the Padres have been outscored 69-35. They’re still winning plenty of games. But they’re making things awfully difficult on themselves.

Canning concerns?

Canning’s first two outings with the Padres were encouraging. Even when he allowed six runs to the Cardinals last week, he did so after four scoreless frames. Things only spiraled on him in a fifth inning that featured Fernando Tatis Jr.’s costly error in right field.

This was a different story. Canning couldn’t locate any of his pitches from the outset. He walked four straight hitters in the first and needed 43 pitches to get through the inning. Sent back out for the second, he wasn’t much better.

Canning’s arrival was supposed to alleviate some of the concerns at the back end of the San Diego rotation. (So, too, is the pending arrival of Lucas Giolito.) But after missing the final few months of 2025, then the first month of this season while recovering from a left Achilles tear, Canning is still clearly working his way back into form.

Burnt-out bullpen

Only four teams have asked their relievers to cover more innings than the Padres this season, and those four teams are all below .500 (most of them well below .500). Then again, the San Diego bullpen is one of the best in the sport. There are worse things than asking that group to pitch.

Still … this seems untenable. At some point, the Padres are going to need more from their starters.

In the short term, Canning’s abbreviated outing puts San Diego in a bind. Ron Marinaccio threw a career high 52 pitches. Yuki Matsui covered two innings. Matt Waldron -- whose roster status is in flux with Giolito’s pending return -- pitched the final two frames, after pitching bulk duty in Tuesday’s series opener.

The Padres don’t have another off-day until Thursday. They have a pivotal three-game series against the Dodgers looming early next week. They’re going to need their bullpen to be fresher than it is right now.