SAN DIEGO -- The Padres and Dodgers have staged two wildly tense baseball games with razor-thin margins at Petco Park this weekend. Their highly anticipated showdown has lived up to its billing -- and then some.

That won’t be any solace in San Diego, after two downright excruciating endings. The Padres are still playing the Dodgers extremely close. They’re still coming up empty. That only makes it sting even more.

• Box score

“We feel like we’re right there,” Padres manager Jayce Tingler said. “We just haven’t been able to finish it off quite yet.”

In the Dodgers’ 2-0 victory on Saturday night, Mookie Betts’ glove proved to be the difference. The Padres put the tying runs on second and third base with two outs in the ninth, and Tommy Pham hit a laser to the right-center-field gap. Betts -- 14 months ago a Padres trade target -- ranged to his left and made an unbelievable all-out grab to end the game.

“Pham has been struggling, steps up and squares a ball up, hits a ball as good as you can right there to right-center,” Tingler said. “Off the bat, you think it's down. We're maybe a half-inch away from tying this game up.”

It was a particularly cruel twist for Pham, who has endured a brutal start to the season. Following his 0-for-4 night, his average dipped to .128 without an extra-base hit. Early in the season, Pham was hitting into some rough batted-ball luck. Recently, his struggles have become more pronounced, and he struck out two times in his first three at-bats on Saturday.

Then, in the ninth, Pham hit a 99-mph rocket to the gap in right-center that seemed destined to tie the game. Betts needed to cover 52 feet in 3.3 seconds -- a play with a 10 percent catch probability.

“I just kind of blacked out,” Betts would say afterward. “I just knew when the ball went up in the air, I had to catch it.”

Much to the Padres’ chagrin, he did. So ended another Padres-Dodgers thriller, complete with yet another on-field tiff that nearly sent the high tensions between these two National League West rivals bubbling over.

In the fourth inning, Dodgers starter Clayton Kershaw believed he’d struck out Jurickson Profar, who took a weak hack but made contact with catcher Austin Barnes’ glove. Kershaw shouted at Profar, Profar shouted back, and the benches cleared -- insofar as both teams milled around in front of their respective dugouts. Nothing came of it, and replay would eventually confirm the catcher’s interference.

• Things get chippy between LA, SD ... again

The moment was merely a brief diversion from an outstanding duel between Kershaw and his former teammate and catch partner Yu Darvish.

Darvish was brilliant over seven innings of one-run ball, stumbling only once in the top of the fifth. He walked No. 8 hitter Barnes to load the bases with two outs, then inexcusably walked Kershaw to plate the game's first run.

“It wasn’t like I lost concentration there,” Darvish said. “I felt like I had good focus. Things like that happen. It’s just part of the game.”

Otherwise, Darvish was borderline untouchable, striking out nine and allowing just one hit. In six of the seven innings he pitched, he set the Dodgers down 1-2-3. In the other, he retired the first two hitters before plunking Zach McKinstry on the shoestring and allowing a bloop single to Luke Raley.

That one blip on Darvish’s otherwise flawless night was all it took for the Dodgers to jump out in front. Justin Turner tacked on a solo homer in the ninth, while the San Diego offense mustered just two hits and two walks against Kershaw.

The Dodgers are now off to the best 15-game start in history for a defending World Series champion, and the Padres find themselves staring down the prospect of a sweep at the hands of their division rivals on Sunday afternoon. It’s generally unwise to peek at the standings in mid-April. But a 5 1/2-game deficit in the National League West feels particularly unpalatable.

“We haven’t had everything clicking quite yet,” Tingler said. “But the one thing I’m encouraged about is the way the guys are competing, the effort, the energy, those things. We feel we’re right there, but we’ve got to do a couple things a little bit better.”