PHOENIX _ Emilio Pagan lifted his cap off his head as he turned to watch the ball sail up and up and over the right field fence.
Not that there was any confirmation needed that Eduardo Escobar's line drive would clear the fence. The shouts of joy from the Diamondbacks' dugout could be heard before the ball was out of the infield.
As Escobar's home run bounced off a tarp covering the empty seats, Pagan replaced his cap, thrust his fist down and turned back toward home plate to get a new ball thrown from catcher Austin Hedges.
After picking up the rosin bag on the back of the mound and squeezing it once, Pagan threw it down in a cloud of dust.
That is where the Padres are at after Escobar's three-run blast in the eighth inning gave the Diamondbacks a 5-4 victory Sunday afternoon at Chase Field.
"It's frustrating," manager Jayce Tingler said. "... We struggled to score runs, and then finally were able to break through and take the lead. You feel good going into the eighth. Didn't work out."
Another brief burst of runs had put the Padres ahead. Another bullpen implosion got them swept out of Arizona and saddled them with a losing record (11-12) for the first time this season.
The Padres will now await word on an injury to Tommy Pham, who hasn't been contributing much but represented the offensive potential of a team that has only that right now.
With the tying run on third base and two outs in the ninth inning, Pham fouled back a pitch and immediately shook his hand. After being examined by athletic trainer Mark Rogow, Pham walked to the dugout. Greg Garcia replaced him in a 1-2 count and struck out on the next pitch, a 94 mph fastball.
Pham went 1-for-4 with a walk, which raised his batting average to .207 and his on-base percentage to .316 _ marks that are 70 and 57 points, respectively, off his career averages coming into this season.
He is illustrative of both what the Padres could be and what they are. Their collective batting average is .194 over the past five games. And what was on Aug. 1 the major leagues' third-best on-base percentage (.354) is now a middling .317.
In particular, the Padres are having futile at-bats with runners on base. They were 3-for-23 Sunday and fell to a major league-worst .209 in those situations this season.
That's why the Padres' fifth straight loss may have been the most infuriating of all, coming as it did on a day when they were patient at the plate and eventually did hit with men on.
They had not led much the previous four days, because they had not scored much. They have scored in just seven of the 45 innings in this losing streak for a total of 13 runs.
It was Garrett Richards keeping them in Sunday's game that allowed them to briefly strike back, scoring three runs in the sixth and another in the seventh to take a 4-2 lead.
That's when the bullpen happened. Again.
Padres relievers, who posted a 3.26 ERA over an eight-game (30 1/3 innings) stretch that ran through Tuesday, have allowed 22 runs in 13 1/3 innings (14.85 ERA) during the losing streak.
Three relievers allowed six runs between the sixth and seventh innings in Saturday night's 7-6 loss.
Sunday afternoon, it was Pagan's turn. After allowing five runs in 3 2/3 innings at the start of the season, the right-hander had not allowed a hit in his previous four innings.
He began the eighth by striking out Ketel Marte. The trouble began with Starling Marte blooping a single into right field that fell between three Padres. David Peralta flied out to right field before Pagan walked Christian Walker and Escobar yanked a 1-1 fastball 407 feet.
"You feel good with Pagan out there," Tingler said.
Losing in any fashion at this point _ on a skid in the midst of the urgency of a 60-game season _ would have been difficult to reconcile.
But the Padres did everything they set out to do at the plate Sunday against Diamondbacks starter Robbie Ray. Except get a hit.
Ray would take a no-hitter into the sixth _ and actually leave with it intact _ before the Padres got four hits in succession off his replacement, Junior Guerra, to score three runs.
For five innings, Ray threw pitches mostly to the vicinity of the strike zone. He walked five batters and hit Fernando Tatis Jr. on the shoulder _ and stranded every one of those baserunners.
A fourth ball to Tatis, leading off the sixth inning, would be Ray's last pitch of the 95 he threw.
Eric Hosmer sent the third pitch from Guerra to the pool deck beyond right-center field for his second homer in two games.
Singles by Pham (on a chopper that bounced high off the plate), Jake Cronenworth and pinch-hitter Josh Naylor put the Padres up a run and put runners at the corners with no outs.
Hedges' sacrifice bunt attempt, almost directly back to Guerra, resulted in Cronenworth being thrown out at the plate. Jorge Mateo followed with a bunt that was ruled a sacrifice even though he was trying to get aboard. That put runners at second and third before Trent Grisham hit a soft liner to shortstop to squander what could have been a bigger inning.
"Trying to get something going offensively," Tingler explained. "Trying to get across home plate, and it didn't work out right there."
The Padres added a run in the seventh on two more walks and a throwing error by Arizona shortstop Nick Ahmed.
Richards became the second Padres pitcher this season to go seven innings, allowing six hits along the way. Stephen Vogt's walk leading off the third inning and Cole Kalhoun's two-out home run, his fourth homer against the Padres this season, accounted for the damage against Richards.
After his win against the Dodgers Tuesday, which improved the Padres to 11-7, Richards was among those that voiced a belief the Padres had arrived as legitimate contenders.
"It's been a bad stretch; I'll be honest," he said Sunday. "Nobody wants that. Nobody shows up every day and expects that. We show up every day expecting to hit three homers and put up 10 runs every single day. So I don't think anybody's mindset is different than that now. Some guys are going through some stuff, and they're going to figure it out But I do think there are good things to come. We're a way better team than what we are playing right now. We've shown that. We got off to an incredible start."
That only makes their current mire feel worse.
"I think we're more than capable of doing it," Tingler said. "I think that's a big part of all the frustration going on right now. We've got a group that can play, can play at the top tier of the league. Not being able to do that right now is very frustrating."
