'Don't think it can get worse': Padres looking to rebound after tough road trip

PHILADELPHIA -- This Padres loss felt like a meaningful one.

Not because of the result. The Padres have lost a lot lately -- nine of their past 10, and all six they’ve played against the Phillies within that span.

Not because they didn’t hit. The Padres haven’t hit much all season. This wasn’t new.

It’s the context here that matters. The Padres fancy themselves as contenders. Not all that long ago, they played the Dodgers for three straight nights in mid-May with first place in the National League West on the line.

But at the final out of their 6-4 loss Thursday to Philadelphia at Citizens Bank Park, the Padres found themselves on the wrong side of the playoff cut line for the first time since April. They’re 32-29 and were just leapfrogged by the Phillies, whose season started so dreadfully that they fired their manager.

The Padres’ season is now at a crossroads. Which isn’t to say they can’t steer things in the right direction. It’s just gotten to the point where that needs to start happening. Soon.

So how do they pull themselves out of their recent spiral? More pointedly, what gives them the confidence that they can prevent this stretch from getting worse?

“I don’t think it can get worse,” said a sullen Manny Machado from the visiting clubhouse in Philadelphia. “I mean, there’s only one way: Up.”

That’s the optimist’s take. The Padres are three games above .500 and part of a bunched-up early Wild Card picture. There’s certainly more than one way that it could go at this point.

But this was a raw postgame version of Machado, after a road trip where he struggled mightily. He’s a player who usually does his best to project confidence -- and he did that, to an extent. But Machado also made it clear that the Padres need to be better. And they know that.

“People are frustrated,” Machado said. “The fans want us to win games. So do we. We’re more frustrated than anybody. We want to turn things around. Everybody on this ballclub is trying to do that. So we’re going to keep working, just know that we’re still in a good position, even though we’re playing like [expletive].

“But things will turn around. It’s a long season. There’s still a lot of baseball to be played. This group in here knows it. All we can do is keep working. Things will change.”

The fix is both simple and impossibly difficult: The Padres need to hit.

That’s all it is, really. The Padres’ best hitters -- Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jackson Merrill -- have all massively underperformed. Tatis has been the best of the three, with a .663 OPS. Merrill and Machado were hovering around .600 until both went deep in Thursday’s series finale, offering some small measure of hope for an offense that needs more from its superstars.

Much more.

On the whole, this offense has been one of the worst in baseball across a sample size that is no longer small. It ranks last in the Majors in runs scored and batting average. Per wRC+, an all-encompassing hitting metric that adjusts for ballparks and league, San Diego entered play Thursday ranked ahead of only Colorado.

The lack of production is putting an untenable strain on the entire roster. The rotation simply isn’t good enough to be asked to win games for the Padres (at least not right now with so many key arms on the injured list).

The bullpen, meanwhile, is one of the best in baseball. But even elite bullpens allow runs. And the Padres allowed some costly runs late in each of the last two games of this series.

Still, it all comes back to the offense -- and the practically non-existent margin for error.

“Offense is what creates momentum and energy,” manager Craig Stammen said. “When there’s less of it, there’s less momentum and there’s less energy. And everybody feels like they’ve got to be the person that figures it out. And baseball is not a game that you can just take over. … We’ve got to figure it out together and as a team.”

As ever, Stammen projected confidence that the Padres would.

“[It was] not our best baseball,” Stammen said of the road trip. “But it’s not who we are as a team.”

They still have more than 100 games left to prove that. And, sure, it’s only June. But these games count for a whole lot, too -- especially as the team begins to mull its direction at the Trade Deadline.

Maybe Machado is right. Maybe this is the low point. It’s up to the Padres to start hitting and prove it over the next few weeks.