WASHINGTON — The comebacks have fallen short. The hits and the runs have yet to get rolling.
The Padres keep saying it will happen, that the offense will come around.
Yet they played their final game of May on Sunday, and they remained stuck in neutral.
“Today was a poor day for us,” Manny Machado said. “Very poor.”
The Padres scored two runs in six-plus innings against a starting pitcher who entered the game with a 5.23 ERA and did virtually nothing against a bullpen that has not been all that dependable.
A 4-2 loss to the Nationals was the Padres’ sixth defeat in seven games, and it made their predictions of an eventual offensive turnaround seem ever more dubious.
This was, at best, an opportunity missed.
“Today is extremely frustrating,” said Gavin Sheets, who has been the Padres’ best hitter for three weeks but went 0-for-4 and struck out three times Sunday. “… Personally, I laid an egg. As a team, we didn’t get it done. We had an opportunity today to come out and win a series on the road, and we really let it get away from us.”
Padres starter Griffin Canning (0-4, 7.16) held the major leagues’ most productive offense scoreless for three innings before allowing a pair of home runs over the next two innings.
The first of the homers came on a 3-0 fastball in the heart of the strike zone that Luis Garcia Jr. ripped over the tall wall in right-center field.
The second home run went to about the same place off the bat of James Wood, and it came after No. 9 batter Keibert Ruiz singled with one out in the fifth.
Down 3-0, the notion of the Padres pulling this one out seemed outdated.
Their six victories in games in which they trailed by at least three runs are most in the major leagues, but they have not overcome a deficit that big in any of their past eight chances to do so.
The Padres have, in fact, scored as many as three runs in just five of their past 12 games.
The offense did at least stir in the seventh.
After Yuki Matsui worked a scoreless sixth inning, the Padres got to within a run.
Xander Bogaerts drew a walk to start the inning, and Jackson Merrill followed with a bunt single before Ty France lined a double on the first pitch of his at-bat and the final pitch of the day for Nationals starter Zack Littell (5-4, 5.01).
Nick Castellanos’ sacrifice fly off reliever Orlando Ribalta scored Merrill and moved France to third.
After Sung-Mun Song drew a walk, pinch-hitter Miguel Andujar struck out looking and Song was thrown out trying to steal second on the final pitch.
The Padres turned to two of their high-leverage relievers at that point, and their deficit grew.
Jeremiah Estrada walked the first batter he faced and yielded a single to the second batter before the Padres got the first out at third base.
Left-hander Adrián Morejón was brought in to face the top of the Nationals’ lineup, and he got the second out on a fielder’s choice grounder by the left-handed-hitting Wood before pinch-hitter Andrés Chaparro grounded a single through the right side to make it 4-2.
Merrill’s one-out single in the ninth inning gave the Padres their lone baserunner in the final two innings, and he was caught trying to steal on the final pitch of a France strikeout to end the game.
The Padres’ first series loss at Nationals Park since 2018 was their second series loss in a row this season and their third in their past four series.
They were 11 games over .500 on May 23. They head into June at 32-26, down to six games over .500 for the first time since they were 22-16 on May 8.
The Padres had 10 hits for the first time in 11 games in a 7-5 victory here on Friday. The seven runs they scored that night equaled their total from their previous five games.
They hit three solo home runs and got three other hits in a 9-4 loss Saturday before getting six hits Sunday.
Their .218 batting average remains the lowest in the major leagues, and their .658 OPS is second-lowest.
Sunday was Littell’s first quality start of the season, though he allowed the Guardians one run over seven innings on Monday as a bulk reliever. He has now allowed just five runs in 23 innings over his past four games.
“He was filling out the zone,” Machado said. “He was just missing barrels; couldn’t barrel him up.”
Washington Nationals center fielder Jacob Young catches a fly ball hit by San Diego Padres’ Manny Machado for an out during the eighth inning of a baseball game, Sunday, May 31, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)
The Padres hit six balls hard, half of those groundouts. They were 1-for-3 with runners in scoring position for the second day in a row. Their best-hit ball was Machado’s 401-foot fly ball caught up against the wall in center field in the eighth inning, a 104 mph drive he just got under. They continued to miss or mishit pitches in the zone they could have damaged.
“We just haven’t collectively been able to put at-bats together, one through nine,” manager Craig Stammen said. “Put three together, and then the fourth one just kind of ends the story really fast. So we’ve got to figure out a way to take at-bats for the guys behind us, in front of us, team at-bats as we go.
“And as a coaching staff, we’ve got to figure out how to get that into the players’ heads, and we’ve got to figure out a way to coach them to be able to take at-bats like that and find out what their mindset is when they’re taking those at-bats — whether they’re thinking that way or not. And I think a lot of times they are thinking that way … and we’re just not able to get it done.”
And the Nationals pitchers are not the caliber of the Phillies’ pitchers, against whom the Padres scored three runs while losing three games earlier in the week and against whom they play their next three games.
“It’s just the culmination of a week to two-week span of just not great baseball,” Sheets said. “Hopefully, this is the peak of it and it’s over. But we’ve got a big test on the road against Philly. That’s another reason why today was such a big game. We could win a series, get hot going into Philly and ride the momentum. Now we’ve got to go there and get the momentum.”
