SAN DIEGO -- Reds manager David Bell decided it was the time to go for it.

It was only the fourth inning vs. the Padres on Friday night, and the Reds trailed by a run with two outs and two men on. Looking to keep a rally alive, Bell pulled starting pitcher Tony Santillan for pinch-hitter Shogo Akiyama. The move didn’t work, as Akiyama struck out against Chris Paddack.

• Box score

Santillan’s replacement, Ashton Goudeau, immediately gave up two runs as Cincinnati went on to drop its second straight game to the Padres, 8-2, at Petco Park.

“Tough call,” Bell said, “but I tried to keep the inning going, see if we could extend that opportunity right there and get back to the top of our order. Try to score. That was the thought process there.”

In one sense, pulling Santillan was bold since a Reds bullpen that came in with a Major League-worst 5.64 ERA would have had to cover six innings if the Reds took the lead. On the other hand, it wasn’t like Santillan was missing bats during his second big league start.

San Diego slugged leadoff home runs against Santillan in the first two innings -- Tommy Pham in the first inning and Wil Myers in the second. In the third inning, Fernando Tatis Jr. led off with a double scorched to left field and later scored on a sacrifice fly to make it a 3-1 game.

According to Statcast, Santillan got only three whiffs in 53 pitches while the average exit velocity on contact was 91.6 mph -- with five balls hit at more than 105 mph.

“Tony was throwing strikes,” Bell said. “Good hitters, and he was trying to make pitches. I haven’t seen it on video yet. It looked like the pitch to Pham was just kind of out over the plate. It didn’t look like a bad pitch, but there’s not a whole lot of margin for error with this lineup.”

The Reds played catch-up all night but could never pull ahead and struck out 11 times in five innings against Paddack.

Jesse Winker delivered a two-out RBI single that scored Kyle Farmer in the third inning. In the fourth, there were runners on first and second base and a shift on for Tucker Barnhart. With third base not covered, Joey Votto stole the base and scored on Farmer’s RBI single to left field.

In the bottom of the fourth inning, Goudeau gave up a leadoff homer to Myers. Five of the first six batters in the inning reached safely -- including Tatis with a RBI single to left field. Goudeau threw 33 pitches in the inning -- with 18 balls -- but escaped with the bases loaded. The right-handed long reliever threw a scoreless fifth inning thanks in part to Winker, who robbed Eric Hosmer with a leaping catch at the left-field fence.

“With Ashton there, he had been well-rested,” Bell said. “We knew we had several innings that he would be able to give us and see if we could get back into the game, and then get to the back end of the bullpen and kind of see where we are. So we took a chance there to kind of get the inning going.”

The bullpen could not prevent the Padres from adding on. Although Art Warren provided a scoreless sixth inning, Sean Doolittle gave up a run and two hits in the seventh. In the eighth -- one night after blowing his first big league save opportunity -- Ryan Hendrix gave up two runs, two hits and a walk.