ATLANTA — The Padres won a game in the afternoon and took a big lead in another game Wednesday evening in large part because of a couple of substitutes in the starting lineup.
Much of the lead in that second game crumbled away at the hands of two fill-in pitchers.
After winning the first game 3-2 on the strength of Chris Paddack’s five shutout innings, a two-run homer by Fernando Tatis Jr. and significant contributions on both sides of the ball from Ha-seong Kim and Jurickson Profar, the Padres were clinging to a 5-4 lead in the fifth inning when the rain came and didn’t stop.
The teams waited. Then they got ready to play again. And then they waited and waited and waited.
Finally, late in the night, the Padres packed up and headed to Miami to play the Marlins still not done with their series against the Atlanta Braves.
“Very happy there is a roof in Miami for the four games,” Padres manager Jayce Tingler said. “And super excited about after that getting back to San Diego.”
When and where the suspended game will be resumed has not been determined.
Wherever and whenever it is, the game will be resumed from where it stopped, with the Braves coming to bat in the bottom of the fifth inning.
The Braves would have to agree to complete the game in San Diego during their scheduled trip to Petco Park from Sept. 24-26. The teams have just four common days off remaining — Aug. 2 and 19 and Sept. 6 and 27. None is convenient for the Padres to return to Atlanta.
The teams played through one deluge, but they couldn’t escape a second. Umpires called players off the field at 7:26 p.m. local time. The grounds crew had just repaired the mound and applied dry clay, and Padres pitcher Tim Hill had completed his warmups.
Not 20 minutes later, the Braves announced the game would resume at 8 p.m.
“We were probably two minutes from taking the field,” Tingler said.
A downpour began. The grounds crew that had removed the tarp and prepared the infield sprinted to put the tarp back on the field.
The rain only got harder. Large swaths of the warning track became puddles. All throughout, there was hope the storm would pass, but it didn’t move.
At 10:30 p.m. local time, the game was officially called.
It was the seventh rain delay the Padres have endured this season. The first six came on their last road trip to the Eastern time zone, in Cincinnati and Philadelphia. The game that was suspended Wednesday night was a makeup of a game postponed by rain here Monday.
Through the clouds, the Padres see light at the end of Sunday.
They have placed a certain level of significance on this road swing that begins the season’s second half. After it ends Sunday in Miami, the team that played the most games in the majors before the All-Star break, ventures East of the Rockies just once and out of the Pacific time zone just one other time. There will be 11 days off interspersed between the season’s final 59 games.
Wednesday’s nightcap was perilously close to being an opportunity lost.
“We talked about having a good road trip,” Tingler said between games, with the Padres having won two of three in Washington and split the first two games here. “We’ve got an opportunity here in about two hours to win the series. That’s a (good) position to be in. We need to come out and play good baseball now.”
They didn’t play poorly. They just didn’t add on or take very good hold of their early lead.
The Padres loaded the bases with no outs and ended up scoring four runs in the first inning, the final two on a double by Ha-seong Kim, who started the nightcap at third base in place of Manny Machado. They added a run in the second when Trent Grisham walked, stole second and scored on Jake Cronenworth’s single.
The advantage dissolved to one run after the Braves put up four in the second inning against Reiss Knehr and Daniel Camarena.
Knehr, making his second major league start, worked a perfect first inning before walking the first two batters in the second. Both of them scored, on a double and a sacrifice fly, before he departed with two outs and a runner on third. Camarena surrendered a double to the first batter he faced, Ehire Adrianza, and gave up an RBI single to the next batter, Joc Pederson.
In the first game, Paddack (6-6) threw a season-high five scoreless innings. He had one previous scoreless start, but that was a three-inning outing in his first start coming off the injured list May 9 in San Francisco. He had allowed three runs in the first inning in each of his previous three starts. The big inning has sunk him several times, as he allowed five or more runs in five of his 17 starts before Wednesday.
Not since June 22, a span of 21 games, had a Padres starting pitcher gone at least five innings without allowing a run. Wednesday was the third game in a row a Padres starter went at least five innings after doing so once in the seven games before that.
“It was exactly what we needed,” Tingler said. “… Hopefully some of the starters can start to get on a roll.”
What two players getting a rare start and Tatis did was enough. If barely.
Tatis’ two-run homer in the fifth inning was the difference. And Kim and Profar took away hits in the field and combined for the game’s first run at the plate and on the bases.
Before Tatis’ two-run homer, his National League-leading 29th home run of the season, staked Paddack to a 3-0 lead in the fifth inning, the Padres went up 1-0 in the fourth when Profar, starting in center field for Trent Grisham, sailed a double off the bricks atop the tall right field wall, went to third on a wild pitch and scored on Kim’s sacrifice fly.
Kim, starting at second base while Jake Cronenworth moved over to first base in place of Eric Hosmer, twice took possible hits from Freeman. He also dove to his left to nab a 103 mph grounder and throw out Dansby Swanson, preventing a single with a runner on third base with two outs in the third inning.
In the fifth inning, with a runner on first base, Profar sprinted in 102 feet to shallow left-center and laid out on the grass to catch a fly ball by Abraham Almonte for the second out.
“There were some great plays behind me,” Paddack said “… When you see the guys got your back, it builds confidence.”
After Paddack was lifted for a pinch-hitter with two runners and one out in the fifth inning, the Braves scored twice off Drew Pomeranz.
Freddie Freeman singled and went to third on Ozzie Albies’ double. Freeman ran home and Albies advanced to third when Pomeranz’s next pitch, a curveball that seemed to surprise catcher Victor Caratini, bounced off Caratini’s glove for a passed ball. Austin Riley’s sacrifice fly scored Albies to make it 3-2.
Mark Melancon set the Braves down in order in the seventh for his major league-leading 28th save.
