Balls continued to bounce off Padres gloves, and batting averages continued to drop as well.
The Padres came back to force extra innings Wednesday but lost for the third time in four games when they couldn’t answer the run the San Francisco Giants scored in the 10th inning.
The 3-2 defeat at Petco Park completed the season-opening seven-game homestand that had begun so spectacularly.
The Padres produced 19 runs in starting the season 3-0, only to score eight in the past four.
With a runner placed on second to start the 10th inning, the Giants scored with two fly balls. The Padres got their runner, Jurickson Profar, to third base on a groundout but could not drive him home. Jorge Mateo struck out and Tucupita Marcano flied out.
The Padres had four singles Wednesday before Wil Myers came to the plate with two outs in the eighth inning and sent a high fly ball into the left field seats to tie the game 2-2.
They had committed two errors and had one non-error help the Giants to their two runs.
Mateo, making his second career start in center field, ran a long way to make a sliding catch on a shallow fly ball for the first out of the second inning. But when the next batter, Darin Ruf, launched a long fly ball his way, Mateo went back and jumped in front of the fence and had the ball go off his glove and over the wall for a two-run homer.
Mateo was not charged with an error, but the Padres did commit a pair of miscues to move into the major league lead in that category.
Profar’s single with one out in the fifth inning was the Padres’ first hit by someone other than starting pitcher Blake Snell, whose single in the third inning was his first hit in 10 big-league at-bats.
Giants starter Kevin Gausman, who completed seven innings in 96 pitches, threw just 47 pitches in cruising through four shutout innings before the Padres got a run and made the right-hander work a bit more by throwing 21 pitches in the fifth.
After his single to center field, Profar went to second on a wild pitch and scored on Mateo’s single, as the rookie got back half of runs he had let carom off his glove in the second inning.
Brian O’Grady pinch-hit for Snell, who had thrown 87 pitches, and flied out to right field to end the inning.
Manny Machado reached on a two-out error in the sixth, and Eric Hosmer followed with a single before Luis Campusano struck out.
Gausman hit for himself in the top of the seventh and took just 11 pitches to get through his final inning of the day.
Snell struck out all three batters he faced in the first inning, each of them on four pitches. He threw 10 strikes.
By the time got through the fourth inning, he was again on the verge of bumping up against his pitch ceiling for this early in the season, having fallen behind to too many hitters and taken 77 pitches to get there.
Nine of those were thrown after Machado had what would have been an inning-ending grounder go off his glove in the fourth inning.
Snell was seemingly about to get through the fifth inning in five pitches when shortstop Ha-seong Kim booted a two-out grounder. Five pitches later, Evan Longoria grounded into a fielder’s choice to end the inning and Snell’s time on the mound.
The Padres’ first road trip of the season begins Friday at Texas. After three games against the Rangers they will go to Pittsburgh for four against the Pirates.
