MILWAUKEE _ Before he walked from the mound at Miller Park, the four infielders who had played behind him for the better part of four innings reached in with their gloves one at a time to tap Garrett Richards on the seat of his pants.
Richards' long road back was complete. It was all he had said he wanted.
But then it wasn't all he wanted, because that is not how a man throws 207 innings in a season or goes 28-16 over two seasons or posts a 3.15 ERA over five seasons in the American League.
Richards walked past a few more pats on the backside as he descended the dugout steps, whipped off his cap with his left hand and hurled his glove down on bench with his right hand.
He had been so close, and he was so angry.
It was one of the things the Padres saw Monday night that furthered their belief they have a pitcher to stick near the top of their rotation next season.
There wasn't much that could have transpired in Richards' first major league game since Tommy John surgery less than 14 months ago to alter the organization's thinking regarding the 31-year-old right-hander they signed in December to a two-year, $15.5 million contract.
What did happen in his 3 2/3 innings, though, provided nothing to temper their expectations.
A 5-1 loss to the Brewers assured the Padres will have a ninth straight losing season, which ties a franchise record set in their first nine years of existence.
They believe it will be the last such campaign for a while, and Richards' debut with them was at least another sign they might be right.
Even in his first start since July 10, 2018, it was clear this was a different kind of pitcher.
Richards struck out five and yielded five hits, commanding to every part of the strike zone a pair of fastballs that moved differently and stayed in the mid-90s and getting three of his eight outs with a slider that looked no less vicious for his time rehabbing.
Ryan Braun led off the second inning with a double, moved to third on a wild pitch and scored on former Padres infielder Cory Spangenberg's two-out single.
Richards worked a perfect third, and after the Padres scored in the top of the fourth when Manny Machado walked and Eric Hosmer doubled, Richards was a strike from surviving one-out hits by Braun and Eric Thames and ending a night with which he would have been happy. But Spangenberg lined a slider at the bottom of the zone over Wil Myers' head in center field to make it 3-1.
That was Richards' 61st pitch and what, regardless of the outcome, was going to be his final batter. He topped out at 63 pitches in his minor league rehab outings, and the plan is he will be kept around that number in what is likely two more starts this season.
The Brewers didn't swing at the first 12 pitches Richards threw.
By that time, he had two strikeouts. The second one came on a slider that Yasmani Grandal watched as it bit down and in to the bottom of the zone, leaving Grandal muttering and staring down umpire Jerry Meals as he walked to the dugout.
Three pitches later, Richards fielded Mike Moustakas' soft grounder near first base and made the short toss to Hosmer at the bag.
Richards was the last Padres player off the field and was greeted as he arrived at the visitors' dugout by teammates who had already come to respect the work ethic they had observed and were now witnesses to what a real live veteran pitcher in a Padres uniform looked like.
There is much for Richards to do before he can be considered anything like the Padres' ace. But Richards has done a lot over eight big-league seasons.
Even while pitching in what he called constant pain due to myriad arm ailments, beginning with a UCL tear in 2016 for which he put off surgery and underwent stem cell treatment, he posted a 3.05 ERA in 138 2/3 innings from 2016-18. In the two seasons before that, he had a 3.18 ERA in 376 innings.
Between the 2014 and '15 season, in which he won those 28 games, Richards went seven or more innings 32 times and allowed two or fewer runs in 23 of those. For comparison, Padres starters have combined for 32 games of seven innings or more and allowed two runs or fewer in 26 of those over the past two seasons.
"We have nobody with that type of pedigree," said Padres manager Andy Green, who manipulated the youngest and least-experienced starting rotation in the majors this season. "... That's a big change for us from a rotation perspective, so we're looking forward to him being in the middle of everything we do going forward."
