Column: Dodgers’ sweep, Blake Snell loss make 2021 feel all but over for Padres

As the question rattled around his head, Padres closer Mark Melancon stared into the distance as he tossed a baseball up again and again. Five seconds. Ten seconds. Nearly 15 seconds.

Why hasn’t this team — with the payroll, the star power, the pitching depth that felt elite as the season gained early steam — turned the corner and gotten hot, as they consistently did in 2020?

“That’s a good question,” Melancon said. “Like, I’m thinking the same thing. For a long time, you could point to certain groups and say they’re not performing well. Then when that one does, the next one doesn’t. Nobody was getting in sync.

“I think that’s been eating at us for months.”

That was two hours before first pitch Sunday at Dodger Stadium. Before the brightest light in a dimming playoff fight, starter Blake Snell, limped off after 11 pitches with groin tightness. Before opposing starter Max Scherzer, inching toward 3,000 strikeouts, wiped out the Padres during an immaculate inning (three Ks, nine pitches) in the second.

Before this whole 2021 thing felt over.

Because it does after an 8-0 battering and sweep that became the latest wound following far too many. That’s somewhat bizarre to think and write, given that the Padres essentially stand tied for the final NL wild-card spot. Who, though, thinks this ends well for an erratic, reeling underachiever facing baseball’s most brutal scheduling gauntlet the rest of the way?

The sweep signaled major trouble. The loss of Snell seemed downright punitive.

“I feel like we’re still loose, still showing up, we’re working, we’re grinding, we’re preparing, doing all those things as a group,” said manager Jayce Tingler, when asked if the Padres’ confidence and emotion feels ravaged beyond repair.

“But obviously, the best sign of confidence is doing it consistently on the field.”

And that’s the bottom line. When the Padres needed to be at their best, they continue to be at their maddening worst.

This isn’t all about what is or is not happening now, to be clear. This is about what did not happen before, when the schedule offered a chance to pad the wild-card cushion for the stretch run of 19 games against the Dodgers and Giants.

The schedule offered a blueprint the Padres refused to follow. Get up five or six games, then aim for .500 baseball with more off days to step into the playoffs rested and a dangerous out.

Suddenly, they found themselves backed into a ghastly corner with Nabil Crismatt facing off with Scherzer before the first inning ended. An unscheduled bullpen day versus one of the best ever, with every game beyond critical, felt like trying to scale Mt. Kilimanjaro in flip-flops.

Snell recently flirted with no-hitters, plural, in a four-game run as opponents hit just .071, the best facing at least 90 batters in that span since Johnny Vander Meer in 1938. Losing him in a showdown game delivered the worst of gut punches.

The stunner of that Stats by STATS nugget, as pointed out by the Union-Tribune’s Kevin Acee, is that the Padres lost three of those four games. Still, Snell offered hope — something increasingly in short supply.

A Padres executive roaming the stadium Sunday asked someone how the day was going, quickly course correcting to “better than mine.”

“It hasn’t turned out the way we want it, but we have to continue to have that move-forward mindset,” Padres catcher Austin Nola said. “… You can give it lip service, it’s very hard to do, but that is the essence of the game.”

True, as always. The blood has ebbed out of this team, though, no matter how much they vow one game can change everything. It’s the right thing to say — the only thing, really — but real belief is missing in too many eyes.

It’s hard to fathom that the Padres won seven of their first 10 games this season against the Dodgers, particularly after suffering back-to-back sweeps. As the season got serious one team got better, which is what legitimate contenders do.

No matter the injuries, there’s too much money and resume in the Padres dugout to become so sleepy at the wheel when it matters the most.

When the Padres’ 2021 tombstone is etched, it should read: “When they hit, they couldn’t pitch; When they pitched, they couldn’t hit.” As the Dodgers piled on Sunday and reliever Austin Adams plunked hitters in the eighth inning like a spirited paintball game, the whole of it felt embarrassing.

This was a team in freefall, wheels flying off the wagon in all directions.

“To be honest with you, I’ve thought about it as well,” said right fielder Wil Myers, asked to identify the hemorrhaging. “It’s a wild thing. You look up and the on-base (percentage) and batting average is similar to last year, which is a good thing. But at the end of the day, the one thing we’re missing is the slug(ging percentage). The homers haven’t been there the way they need to be in the new game where pitching is so good.

“I don’t care what any old-school guy has to say. It’s going to be very hard to get three hits off Scherzer in one inning. You’ve got to have that big blast at some point.”

The Padres managed one hit off Scherzer, a double by Eric Hosmer in the eighth after the 19th member of the 3,000-strikeout club erased the first 22. The Dodgers mashed three homers off three different bats.

The organization faces serious questions at the close of the season. Can Tingler survive if the wild card is a distant memory by the end of the month. Should he?

Meanwhile, the pauses and lack of answers clubhouse-wide speak volumes.