Padres get offensive again, split series with Giants before heading to big weekend in St. Louis

Same view. Seems different.

The Padres are still having to look up in the standings, but suddenly they are holding their heads high with smiles on their faces as they do so.

A winless start to a road trip in which the Padres never held a lead and might as well have not held their bats has turned. It has given way to consecutive victories over the team with the most wins in the major leagues during which the Padres got more hits than they had in the previous week.

The Padres on Thursday again scored early and added on late to beat the Giants 7-4 at Oracle Park, splitting a four-game series. (Box score.)

Next up is what feels like could be a season-altering set in St. Louis.

That is where the Padres headed after the game and where they will play the Cardinals the next three days on the final leg of a three-city, 10-game trek.

The Cardinals (76-69), who were off Thursday after a sweep of the New York Mets, hold the second wild-card spot, a half-game up on the Padres (76-70) and one game ahead of the Cincinnati Reds (76-71).

“We have a happy flight,” said left fielder Tommy Pham, who hit a two-run double and threw out runner at second base, both in the fourth inning. “To win the last two here against a really good team is always a good thing. We can take this momentum to St. Louis.”

They hope — as they have before, often without sustaining their success.

But it certainly seems they have rediscovered the ability to patiently string together good at-bats. After hitting .199 in their previous 28 games, the Padres had 16 hits Wednesday and 14 more Thursday. That included three apiece by Adam Frazier and Austin Nola and two each by Pham and Fernando Tatis Jr., who hit his National League-leading 39^th home run.

“It’s been very frustrating,” Pham sad. “A lot of guys, including myself, from a performance standpoint are not having the seasons we want. But we’re still in this playoff race. Right now, the important thing is to go out there and figure out a way to help the team win to get us in the playoffs.”

Such a quest seems more plausible after the past two days.

For all the Padres did at the plate Thursday, the tenuous state of their pitching staff made the four scoreless innings Nabil Crismatt turned in arguably the most significant performance on a day the team had to use seven relievers.

“He was huge today — to get us with a lead and get us as far as he did,” manager Jayce Tingler said.

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After Pierce Johnson pitched a scoreless first, Crismatt worked the second through the fifth innings, extending his scoreless streak to 12 2/3 innings over eight outings.

By the time he departed, the Padres were up 4-0.

They did not face quite the same Kevin Gausman they saw three times earlier this season. The All-Star right-hander’s split-finger fastball confounded them in April and May, as he allowed one run in seven innings once and one run in six innings twice.

The Padres doubled that production by the third inning this time.

After not holding a lead at any point in the first five games of this trip before leading all nine innings Wednesday, the Padres went up in the second inning Thursday on singles by Frazier and Pham and Trent Grisham’s sacrifice fly.

Tatis’ home run, a liner that just cleared the wall near the left field corner, made it 2-0 in the third inning.

The Padres doubled that lead in the fifth on singles by Jurickson Profar and Tatis and a two-run double to right by Pham.

Thursday was the third time this season and first time in five career starts against the Padres that Gausman allowed more than three earned runs. He was lifted for a pinch-hitter in the fifth.

Crismatt was replaced by Austin Adams, who had his viciously unpredictable slider lead to a run coming in on a wild pitch in the sixth. Adams began the inning with a strikeout before Kris Bryant doubled to right field, went to third on a fly ball to right field and then ran home on an 0-2 slider Adams bounced in the dirt.

After Evan Longoria bounced a double off the left field wall and Brandon Crawford walked, Daniel Hudson replaced Adams and got Wilmer Flores on a fly ball to center field.

The Giants scored another run with help from a wild pitch in the seventh by Hudson, but he escaped the inning when Darin Ruf lined out to Manny Machado at third base and Bryant struck out.

The Padres added three runs in the eighth on singles by Nola and Grisham and an RBI double by pinch-hitter Wil Myers, all in succession with one out, and then a two-out walk by Tatis and a two-run single by Machado.

It was the second straight game in which the Padres scored in four innings — after they had not done so even once in 22 games. Their 30 hits in the two games were their most in back-to-back contests since mid-July and just two fewer than they totaled in their previous six games.

The Giants got their final run in the bottom of the inning against Tim Hill before Emilio Pagán struck out Curt Casali to end the eighth.

Mark Melancon worked a third straight game and yielded a run on two singles and yet another wild pitch, but he retired pinch-hitter Thairo Estrada on a fly ball and struck out Brandon Belt.

It seems unlikely Melancon is available Friday, and some other back-end relievers seem destined to be down for a day as well. That is not an entirely surprising predicament given that the Padres have two starters (Blake Snell and Chris Paddack) on the injured list and have played seven games without a day off.

This is a concern. But their offense is finally producing, and that makes them seem more like contenders than the pretenders they seemed while going 8-20 from Aug. 11 through Tuesday.

And it may be just in time.

“We’re excited to get into St. Louis,” Tingler said. “We’re playing a team we’re trailing and we’re fighting for the same thing. What more can you ask for?”