PHOENIX — At first, it was more bad luck.
Then, pitching in the sixth inning for the first time this season, Chris Paddack had another one of those innings that have plagued him much of the past two seasons.
The 25-year-old right-hander’s misfortunes continued Tuesday night as the Padres got on with the rest of their season — after an off day that followed 17 games in 17 days and the exhaustingly successful four-game series at Dodger Stadium that concluded the stretch.
At least immediately, they were no better for having been able to rest.
An error by center fielder Trent Grisham gifted the Diamondbacks two runs early, and the home team pulled away for a 5-1 victory at Chase Field.
The loss dropped the Padres (13-12) into fourth place in the NL West for the first time this season, percentage points behind the Diamondbacks (12-11), who moved above .500, also for the first time.
Paddack also gave up three runs in the sixth inning. Those were on him, as he left a fastball in the heart of the strike zone on David Peralta’s RBI single and a change-up in almost the same spot, up in the zone, that Carson Kelly launched 438 feet to the seats beyond left field.
Paddack has allowed a multiple-run inning in each of his five starts.
Not that all have been a direct result of his poor pitching. Of the 19 runs Paddack has yielded this season, just 14 have been earned.
And that was after a scoring change by Major League Baseball on Sunday added four earned runs to his total. He had initially been deemed to have allowed just one earned run among the five the Brewers scored in the third inning in his last start, but MLB turned an error by Jurickson Profar into a single and made all five runs earned.
Tuesday night, it was a fly ball that would have ended the second inning but instead hit off Grisham’s glove after he had run well into the left field gap and called off Profar. Grisham’s first error in 61 starts allowed two runs to score.
The Padres scored a run in the sixth inning when Fernando Tatis Jr. grounded a double the other way down the right field line, went to third on Grisham’s fly ball to right field and scored on a groundball Manny Machado scalded to third base.
They had a runner on second base with one out in the first and second innings but made consecutive outs both times. Profar led off the fifth inning with a walk before Victor Caratini grounded into the Padres’ major league-leading 27th double play.
The Padres drove Merrill Kelly from their April 2 meeting after four innings, with him having allowed three runs and thrown 94 pitches. His strikeout of Wil Myers ended the top of the sixth inning Tuesday night after Kelly had allowed a two-out single to Hosmer, just the third hit by the Padres.
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