Late swing doesn't go Padres' way this time in loss to Cardinals

Michael King continued to trend toward being the ace the Padres need him to be.

But the Padres were stymied again by an opposing starting pitcher, leaving little margin for things to not go exactly right.

When they did not on Thursday night, the Padres lost 2-1 to the Cardinals in the opener of a four-game series at Petco Park.

“If you get a get some offense early, you’ve got a little bit of a cushion,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said. “But, you know, they didn’t have a cushion either at the end of the game.”

What the Cardinals did have was timely hitting to the right spots, including to right field when the Padres’ (and probably the major leagues’) best right fielder was not there.

The Cardinals broke a 1-1 tie by scoring against Bradgley Rodriguez in the seventh inning when Jordan Walker’s double landed just fair down the left-field line and a triple down the right-field line by Masyn Winn got past the sliding catch attempt by Nick Castellanos - pretty much the exact play the younger and much quicker Tatis has made his signature.

“It’s a tough play for Nick,” Stammen said. “He went for it. Can’t fault him on that. He makes that catch … he basically (changes) the game and (keeps) it where it was. If he just lets it fall, does the guy from second score? I don’t know. Probably not. Maybe. Who knows? But he went for it. That’s what we want our players to do. We want them to go for it. Want them to play with freedom. And him going for it, he felt like he could get it. Sometimes you get it. Sometimes you don’t.”

Castellanos, who got a good jump and got his glove within six inches of robbing Winn, started in right field because Fernando Tatis Jr. was at second base while left-handed-hitting Sung-Mun Song sat against a lefty starter. Castellanos was still there in the seventh inning because Stammen thought it was too early for a defensive replacement.

“We want his bat in the lineup, and we felt like we needed to score some runs,” Stammen said. “In a tie game, we want him swinging the bat. He’s been swinging the bat hot here, and that’s what we’re thinking. If I’m like guessing the ball is going to get hit to right field, I’m going to be guessing wrong a lot.”

Far more disconcerting for the Padres is that they had a quality start thrown against them for the 18th time in 37 games, this one by left-hander Matthew Liberatore. Thursday was the third time in their past eight games they had just three hits, tying a season low.

It was the first time in five games in which they were tied after six innings that the Padres lost. Half of their 22 victories have come when they scored the deciding run in the seventh inning or later.

A comeback is difficult to achieve when your final hit is leading off the seventh inning and that runner gets throwin out trying to steal second base, as happened to Tatis after he beat out a grounder deep in the hole at shortstop off reliever George Soriano.

After Tatis was thrown out - on a play that was reviewed and on which the call was upheld - the Padres' final eight batters were retired.

The night began unconventionally for the Padres, who scored a first-inning run for just the fourth game this season. And they did so with help from their two struggling stars.

With two outs, Manny Machado drew an eight-pitch walk and Tatis lined a single into left-center field.

That led to a run, because Xander Bogaerts again got an RBI on a swing he didn't mean to make.

Bogaerts, who on Sunday drove in the winning run on a check-swing infield single that bounced off the plate and traveled about 75 feet, pulled off something similar but very different on Thursday night.

He halted his swing a little more than midway through on a 95 mph fastball well above the zone and had the ball travel 264 feet to right field, where it bounced in front of Walker, the Cardinals’ right fielder, as Machado ran home.

The Padres’ lead held until the fourth inning, when King left a changeup a little higher than he would have liked and Alec Burleson lined it to the seats beyond right field.

It was the only hit King allowed in his six innings, as he recorded his fourth quality start in his past six outings and lowered his season ERA to 2.76 over eight starts (45⅔ innings).

The Padres would not get another hit until Miguel Andujar's two-out single in the sixth inning, which Liberatore completed on a total of 81 pitches.

That is why their focus was not on where the other team hit the ball or who was there or not there to try to catch it.

“We’re trying to score runs,” Stammen said. “You want to play offense early and get ahead, and then you can put your defense in late is kind of the way I look at it. You just can’t have both at all times. And right now, we’re just not scoring a ton of runs. So you feel like (you want to) get as many good bats in there as we can with a good matchup and see if we can outscore the other team a little earlier. But we weren’t able to do that tonight.”

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This story was originally published May 7, 2026 at 10:09 PM.