NEW YORK _ Wil Myers' flare into shallow right field popped in and out of Yankees second baseman DJ LeMahieu's glove in the sixth inning.
The official scorer in the Yankee Stadium press box quickly and impassively announced, "Base hit."
That meant the Padres would not be an iconic franchise's 12th no-hit victim, and the only franchise without a no-hitter of its own would not be no-hit for the 11th time in its existence.
With that ignominious history avoided, the focus could be back on what happened Tuesday to the young pitcher the Padres believe could one day be their history maker.
Rookie Chris Paddack saw a lot more of his pitches float to the middle portion of the strike zone and heard a lot more sound of lumber hitting cowhide and rubber-coated cork.
His part of a 7-0 loss in the finale of the three-game series and six-game international interleague road trip saw him allow more hits, more home runs, more earned runs and more hard contact than he had in any of his first nine big league starts.
The 23-year-old right-hander, who entered the game with the major leagues' second-lowest ERA among a number of dazzling statistics, left after five innings.
The Padres, who had won seven of Paddack's nine starts, lost two of three in the Bronx this week and finished 3-3 on a trip that began with two victories.
By the time he left, the Yankees had scored four times on six hits, three of them solo homers in the first two innings.
Paddack's first eight pitches were all strikes. The third one was a change-up left up that LeMahieu hit 403 feet to left field. The fifth was a fastball left up that Luke Voit hit 419 feet to center field.
The Yankees were up 2-0.
With one out in the second inning, Gio Urshela turned on another change-up that caught too much of the plate and was a little too high, sending it 376 feet, into the seats beyond left field.
In Paddack's only previous truly rough start, the Dodgers wore him down May 14, taking balls and fouling off pitches to get to ones they could better hit.
Tuesday, the Yankees jumped on him.
They hit Paddack like no one had _ harder and more often.
Paddack lives near and inside the strike zone. Thrives there. His 73.8% first-pitch rate entering the game led the majors. So did his overall strike rate of 71 percent.
He kept most of those strikes on the edges and/or low. He mostly mixed his deceptive change-up with a mid-90s fastball to keep hitters off-balance.
No one had allowed fewer well-hit balls on pitches in the strike zone. On the 133 times batters had put a strike from Paddack in play, just 14 had been well-hit (an exit velocity of at least 97 mph).
His 61 strikes among his 86 pitches Wednesday was a rate of 70.9 percent. He got up at least 0-1 on 16 of the 24 batters he faced.
His strikes were just generally not of their usual quality.
The Yankees smacked six pitches in the zone with an exit velocity of 97.7 mph or faster in the first two innings. The five that were hits were all 100.3 mph or faster.
The Dodgers and Mets both hit four balls with an exit velocity of 100-plus mph against Paddack. The Reds had three. Atlanta and Arizona (first meeting) had two apiece. The Cardinals hit one. The Diamondbacks didn't hit one ball that hard May 20th, Paddack's most recent start. Neither did the Giants or Mariners.
The Yankees sent six balls (five hits) rocketing at more than 100 mph and eight at more than 97 mph.
Meanwhile, the Padres did not get a hit off Yankees left-hander James Paxton in his first four innings off the injured list. They did not get a hit off Chad Green in the fifth.
Down 4-0 in the sixth inning, the Yankees turned to Adam Ottavino, who had allowed 13 hits in 25 1/3 innings this season. Myers was the first batter to face him, and he fought off a fastball barely on the inside edge of the plate and sent it over LeMahieu.
Austin Allen, pinch-hitting for Austin Hedges to start the eighth inning, hit a rule-book double down the left-field line.
The Padres loaded the bases on a walk by Manny Machado and singles by Eric Hosmer and Hunter Renfroe with none out in the ninth before Ty France grounded into a pitcher-catcher-first base double play and Ian Kinsler hit a soft liner to shortstop to end the game.
