LOS ANGELES — The Padres are doing the walk of shame.
They laughed and danced and spun the Swagg Chain like it was going to be 1998 (but better).
Oh, it was fun for a time. A lot of fun. They even remember some of it.
But they made some bad decisions and empty promises. And now they have to play out the string, full of regret.
The team that was the life of the party back in April had its official last call on national television this past Saturday.
Now, with the swagger having given way to skulking, they have to take the final few steps in front of the teams and fans that have so long considered them hardly more than fodder.
“I’ve been in these stadiums getting my ass kicked plenty of times,” said Wil Myers, the longest-tenured Padres player. “I was able to go into these stadiums this year, early on and do the opposite. We came in here and won, shut these crowds up. But here we are again in the same freaking scenario we’ve been for seven years except a 60-game season. It’s tough, it’s frustrating, it’s sickening. But we’re here, and we’ve got to finish it out.”
Tuesday night’s game, in which they lost 2-1 to the Dodgers and fell below .500 for the first time this season, was the first of the six games the Padres play in the season’s final week. Six long games against the Dodgers and Giants, who are fighting each other for the National league West title with the Padres as their go-between.
“We’ve got a chance, playing the Dodgers and then San Francisco,” Padres manager Jayce Tingler said Tuesday afternoon, “to go out, play good baseball and get a chance to factor in how the division winner, wild card winner, how those things shape up.”
It is probably impossible for many Padres fans to read that without shuddering. It’s so meaningless. So familiar.
The Padres have reached the final week in the same spot. Yet it is different.
“I’ll tell you what, it hit harder being out of it late in the season than it did (being out of it) at the All-Star Game in years past,” said Myers, who has been with the Padres since 2015. “You come out in ‘17 and (Dodgers opening day starter Clayton) Kershaw is making more than your starting lineup, it’s like, ‘OK.’ … There have definitely been times, there were teams that weren’t competing the whole season, but this was one that was built up for a long time. To have it taken away is really difficult. It makes the last week even tougher than the last two months of other seasons when you’ve already been out of it.”
This is the place to where arguably the most anticipated season in Padres history has devolved: The Padres were assured of finishing in third place in the NL West when the Colorado Rockies lost Monday.
The old way of thinking held that was pretty good. This is just the 18th time they have finished that high in 53 years of existence.
They must go 3-2 this week to be a .500 club at season’s end, a mark they have reached or bettered just 17 times in all and just once in their past 12 full seasons.
They will have to do better offensively than they did Tuesday against Walker Buehler, who held them to three hits in seven innings before Joe Kelly worked a perfect eighth. Jake Cronenworth’s one-out homer of Blake Treinen in the ninth inning kept the Padres from being shut out.
Eric Hosmer drew a two-out walk to bring up Tommy Pham, who looked at a called third strike. That stranded pinch-runner Ha-seong Kim, who had stolen second base.
While the Dodgers pecked away at Yu Darvish for a run in the first inning and another in the third before he departed having thrown 85 pitches through four innings, the Padres’ first hit off Buehler was Hosmer’s chop single leading off the fifth. Hosmer also doubled in the seventh.
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