Padres drop series to Rangers as Lucas Giolito struggles again

ARLINGTON, Texas — The San Diego Padres have starting pitching problems.

They don’t hit very well against them. And their own are getting knocked around pretty good.

The Padres on Sunday lost 4-3 to the Texas Rangers in a game that was more emblematic of the latter but was also somewhat illustrative of the former.

While Nathan Eovaldi did throw the 38th quality start against the Padres this season — more than any other team has had thrown against it — it was the four runs Lucas Giolito allowed in the middle two of his four innings that doomed the Padres .

“It sucks,” Giolito said. “I’m the reason the team lost and we lost the series.”

Giolito was technically the bulk reliever Sunday. But that technicality only accentuates the Padres’ rotation problem.

Sunday was the third time in six games the Padres used an opener and the third time that the relief pitcher who started turned the game over to a starter without allowing a run.

Wandy Peralta, as he had ahead of Giolito on Monday in St. Louis and as Bradgley Rodriguez had ahead of Griffin Canning on Wednesday in St. Louis, worked a scoreless first inning Sunday.

Giolito followed by retiring the middle of the Rangers lineup in order in the second.

He then allowed three runs in the third and — after the Padres had tied the game — another in the fourth before finishing with a 1-2-3 fifth.

“The offense is fighting,” Giolito said. “I give up three runs, we answer right back, and then I give up another one. It’s pretty (awful), you know. I gotta be better than that. I don’t really have anything else to, like, analyze or get into. It’s just I have to be better than that. It’s a horrible job.”

Ostensibly, the difference in the game was that Eovaldi came back from allowing six hits in the fourth inning to strike out Samad Taylor, retire Jackson Merrill on a groundout and strike out Manny Machado in the fifth.

“We put him on the ropes that one inning,” Xander Bogaerts said. “He got out of that one, and he put up a shutdown inning, and he kind of cruised after that.”

Bogaerts was the only baserunner against Eovaldi (7-7, 4.24) the rest of the way, drawing a two-out walk in the sixth before the veteran right-hander finished his day with his ninth strikeout.

“He’s a good competitor, man,” Bogaerts said of Eovaldi, his teammate for five seasons in Boston. “He’s one of the best competitors I’ve seen. He studies a lot, puts in a lot of work.”

Giolito (2-3, 5.16) is also a veteran who works hard and knows how to pitch. That is why the Padres felt he could help lift an injury-depleted rotation and signed him in late April.

But he has struggled with his command from the start, and it isn’t getting better.

“More of the same from what we’ve seen from him,” manager Craig Stammen said. “You see some spurts of like, ‘Oh, this could be really good’ and then you see the spurts of, ‘He’s really struggling out there.’”

He is far from alone.

Indicative of the two-way struggles — the Padres’ starters’ frequent inability to prevent runs and the Padres’ hitters frequent inability to score runs early in games — Sunday was the 21st time in the past 25 games a Padres’ starting pitcher has departed with the team trailing or tied.

It is no coincidence that the Padres are an MLB-worst 8-17 in their past 25 games.

“We’re in a little bit of a period (where) we’re talking about the hitting in that time period and the starting pitching all kind of just scuffling a little bit at the same time,” Stammen said. “And that makes it difficult. But I know both those entities are going to get out of it at some point.”

The offense is actually emerging from an extended malaise that spanned all of May and into June. The Padres are batting .249 with a .716 OPS and averaging 4.6 runs over their past 12 games.

But the starting pitchers (excluding openers but with Giolito and Canning included) have a 5.24 ERA in that span.

No baseball game looks exactly the same, even though this one featured similar struggles to many of the others.

The entire Rangers lineup got to the plate in the third inning, though only the first three batters scored.

Giolito began that inning by walking Kyle Higashioka before No. 9 hitter Nicky Lopez singled and Wyatt Langford homered on a first-pitch changeup elevated and over the center of the plate.

After Giolito got an out, the Rangers loaded the bases on two singles and a four-pitch walk before a pop-up and fly ball ended what had seemed might be an interminable inning.

The Padres responded with three runs in the next half-inning that would have been four if not for an aggressive send by third base coach Bob Henley.

Merrill began the fourth inning with a double, moved to third on Manny Machado’s single and scored on a single by Gavin Sheets.

After Will Wagner’s grounder to the right side moved both runners up, Bogaerts grounded a single under shortstop Ezequiel Duran’s dive easily scored Machado and prompted Henley to send Sheets.

Sheets, who had momentarily broken back toward second base as the ball neared Duran, was not quite to third base when Langford, the center fielder, threw the ball in somewhat softly. But Duran fired a short-hop that Higashioka, the catcher, grabbed and swiped in one motion to tag out Sheets.

A single by Ty France moved Bogaerts to second, and he scored from there on a double off the right-field wall by Sung-Mun Song before Rodolfo Durán struck out.

Giolito began the bottom of the fourth with an out before successive singles by Lopez, Langford and Josh Jung brought in a run. A double play grounder ended that inning.

But that run was all the Rangers would need, as Eovaldi settled in before three relievers finished off the Padres.

Peyton Gray retired them in order in the seventh.

Machado walked with one out in the eighth before Miguel Andujar pinch-hit for Wagner against left-hander Robby Ahlstrom and grounded into a double play.

Fernando Tatis Jr. led off the ninth with a pinch-hit single, and Bogaerts followed with a single before France, Song and Durán made outs against Jacob Junis to end the game.

Thus ended a 4-5 road trip that spanned three cities and two series losses over 11 days.

It was shortly before the trip that Merrill and Machado began to heat up at the plate, and the Padres headed home to face the National League East-leading Atlanta Braves having hit .288 as a team over the past four games. Stammen focused on those improvements and was also buoyed by the comeback early and the attempted comeback late.

“It just shows that these guys compete,” he said. “They come back. We get down, we always come back. It’s just kind of the M.O. of our team and identity, and that’s a great identity to have. That’s going to last a full season.”

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