Snell buckles after six perfect innings; Angels blank Padres

Blake Snell more or less shrugged as Padres manager Jayce Tingler pulled him from his previous start without a single hit on his pitching line.

The bigger picture, Snell and his skipper reasoned last week in Arizona, was more important than chasing the franchise’s second no-hitter.

Besides, Snell appears to have plenty of no-hit innings in the holster.

If only his offense had a few more hits up their sleeve.

The Padres’ resurgent left-hander on Tuesday opened a two-game series with the Angels with six perfect innings before buckling. That Jo Adell’s seventh-inning, two-run single proved the back-breaker only added to the mounting frustration at Petco Park as a 4-0 loss again dropped the Padres into a tie for the NL’s second wild-card spot with the Reds, a winner on Tuesday in Chicago. (Box score.)

As telling as anything, a team that finished 2020 with the majors’ third-best record hasn’t won three games in a row in a month.

“The biggest thing is we’ll get going, win a couple and then we’ll lose one,” Snell said after his tough-luck loss. “We haven’t gotten on that streak we know we’re capable of doing because we’re so talented as a team. I feel like once we find our stride and continue to learn from each other, we can be a very scary dangerous group.”

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They’re running out of time to back that talk.

After Wednesday, the Padres play 23 straight games against contending teams. That they’ve squandered the cushion in the standings they had to start August has hardly been Snell’s fault.

He struck out 10 in 7 2/3 innings of one-run ball against the Dodgers on Aug. 25. He threw seven no-hit innings at the Diamondbacks to close the month. To start September on Tuesday, he was through six perfect innings on 66 pitches before even issuing a three-ball count.

That, though, led to David Fletcher’s leadoff walk in a scoreless game. A replay review showed Snell got the tag down on Luis Rengifo’s ensuing bunt attempt, but Fletcher swiped third base, Jack Mayfield walked and swiped second and Adell punched the Angels’ first hit of the game past a diving Jake Cronenworth at shortstop for a two-run single.

Bye-bye, perfect game.

So long, no-hitter and shutout.

Even worse, the Padres had wasted yet another gem from Snell, whose six-start run of dominance in August (1.72 ERA) was good for no better than three wins for the Padres’ hit-and-miss offense.

Now they are 0-1 behind a dominant start to September.

“It’s got to be a collective effort, no doubt about it,” Tingler said. “He’s doing his job and more. As a group we have to pick it up, especially when he’s throwing the ball that way. When he’s throwing the ball that way, bottom line is those got to be wins.”

Nobody has been as sharp as Snell.

In fact, that brilliant August in which he held opposing hitters to a .151/.225/.286 batting line was punctuated by the seven no-hit innings he threw on the last day of the month, a 10-strikeout gem that pushed his pitch count to 107 on the heels of throwing a career-high 122 pitches in his previous start.

With an eye on needing Snell, a disappointment in the first half, to front a September playoff push, Tingler pulled the former Cy Young winner before the eighth inning in a harrowing decision aimed at protecting the former Cy Young winner’s arm and watched Pierce Johnson give up a one-out single to David Peralta.

There was no need to stress such decisions the way Snell threw the ball Tuesday.

“He’s on an unbelievable roll right now,” Tingle said. “He’s had some dominant performance all throughout the year, but he’s on a really strong run now. Tonight was as sharp as we’ve seen him all year. To take a perfect game into the seventh, he’s on a great run. It’s just disappointing to not get any runs on the board and not get enough traffic.

“You feel like you threw a dominant performance away tonight.”

The perfect game was lost to two walks, both of which wound up scoring on Adell’s single to left.

Because of course they did.

“Every time I walk someone they score; every single time,” Snell said. “I need to do a better job of not walking people. Good job to them to take a lot of pitches (that) they were swinging at early on. In the last inning, they made it tough.”

Snell ultimately fetched a groundout to end a 34-pitch seventh — or two more pitches than he’d thrown through the first three innings of the game. He finished with 11 strikeouts on 100 pitches (70 strikes) and at least a piece of Padres history.

Including the seven no-hit innings thrown at the Diamondbacks on Aug. 31, Snell’s 13 2/3 consecutive hitless innings were the most ever by a Padres pitcher, passing Bill Laxton’s run of 13 in July/August 1974.

Over his last four starts, hitters have an .071 batting average, the lowest since Johnny Vander Meer spun two no-hitters in a four-start stretch in 1938 in which he held hitters to an .063 batting average.

The Padres went 1-3 in those four Snell starts.

“He’s been on a pretty good roll,” Tingler said before Tuesday’s game. “ … Feels like in his delivery, he’s been a lot more consistent. He’s been really north and south and getting down the mound and he’s been aggressive with all his pitches. We’ve always known when he’s ahead, 0-1 and 1-2, he’s got really good swing-and-miss stuff. And so right now he’s been on a pretty good tear of being aggressive in the zone and getting ahead.”

The problem Tuesday was Packy Naughton was even more frustrating than he was last month while limiting the Padres to two unearned runs in 4 1/3 innings in relief in his second big-league appearance.

This time?

The Boston native (where else with a name like Packy, right?) struck out five batters, scattered two hits and two walks and didn’t allow a runner past second base over five shutout innings.

The only runner who touched second base with Naughton still in the game was stranded when Ha-seong Kim and Snell struck out with runners on first and second in the second inning.

Naughton retired the final seven hitters he faced before he was lifted for a pinch-hitter in the sixth.

Manny Machado opened the bottom of the sixth with a leadoff single off Jimmy Herget, but he was erased quickly when Jake Cronenworth lined into a double play and the Angels’ bullpen didn’t allow another hit until Cronenworth’s one-out single off Raisel Iglesias in the ninth.

Tommy Pham followed with a walk, but Wil Myers grounded out to second and Jurickson Profar flied out to center to end the game.

Meantime, the Padres’ pen allowed an infield single to MLB-home-run leader Shohei Ohtani after he was announced as an eighth-inning pinch hitter to a loud applause from a crowd of 34,405, Rengifo’s solo homer off Emilio Pagán and an RBI groundout that cashed in the ball that Pham misplayed into a double over his head in left, turning the Angels’ 2-0 lead into a more comfortable four-run advantage in the ninth.