Column: Resilient Padres notch best, craziest series win of season against Braves

The Padres polished off their best series win of the season Sunday against the defending world champion Braves because they played sloppy at times and somewhere between cringy and outright ugly in others.

There were long stretches of offensive flailing, brain cramps in big moments and pitching that unraveled.

They won two of three anyway.

That’s because the road warriors who have not lost a series away from home since an April 13 setback in San Francisco were more warrior-y than normal — capped with a 7-3, 11-inning, roller-coaster ride at Truist Park.

They faltered in early-game moments during the series. They were clutch late. They lost leads. They ripped them away from the Braves in front of sellout crowds, time and again. They were pushed and tested. A bounce or three and either team could have swept the other.

When the smoke cleared, it felt like graduating from a punishing boot camp.

“I was talking to some of the guys in the dugout,” pitcher Joe Musgrove said. “I feel like having a series like this to start off a long road trip against some really good teams, it’s important. To not run through a team in three games and get that false sense of confidence, but to have some battles back and forth.

“To lose one and be able to pull out two of the three is huge.”

Start with Musgrove, the starter. He has been so bionically efficient this season, that it’s jarring to see him create any semblance of trouble for himself.

Musgrove had three walks in 39 innings entering the series, then doubled his season total in less than six innings. Shockingly, he had gone to three-ball counts just 13 times coming in — but did it eight times against 25 hitters Sunday, including to the first two.

And still, he banked six innings like normal and kept the Padres in it.

“To have some of those outings every now and again is a good reminder of what that feels like,” Musgrove said. “It’s kind of a chance to touch up on some of the things that you need to have throughout the course of a good season.

“Being able to get out of jams, being able to work from behind in the count, to have a deficit early and then manage to get through six innings and keep it at what it’s at, those things are all very important to me.

“As much as it’s not as exciting as seven scoreless, it’s almost more beneficial.”

That feeling extended like octopus tentacles in nearly every direction.

When Adam Duvall singled to right field in the third inning, Wil Myers initially fumbled the ball and made a lazy throw that found second baseman Robinson Cano on the bounce.

Cano failed to secure the ball, which squirted behind him. When he turned his back to the plate to grab it, Dansby Swanson scrambled home for a gift run and an early, avoidable deficit.

Then Myers tied the game at 3 with an RBI single in the seventh and sealed it on a two-run single in the 11^th.

“Yeah, I think so,” said Myers, when asked if it was the best series victory this season. “Just the battles that we had were really good, and for us to come out on top was even better. So I think it just give some confidence on what we can do late in games and be able to come back.

“Any time you can get experience like that, and find ways to win in other ways, it’s always great.”

A couple lockers away, Ha-Seong Kim was telling the same story.

Kim was picked off trying to steal third in a tie game after a one-out double in the eighth. Dwelling on the gaffe was short-lived as Kim doubled home extra-innings runner Jake Cronenworth to snag the lead in the 11^th.

Instead of the base-running play draining aggressiveness, Kim found more. He raced home on a ground ball to second baseman Ozzie Albies against a drawn-in infield. He scored because of a phenomenal, sweeping hand slide — just outside of catcher William Contreras’ reach.

The insurance run deflated the Braves.

“It feels great to win the series against a team like Atlanta,” said Kim, seeing the big picture as well. “That’s a strong team, resilient.”

Bullpen baton-passers Craig Stammen, Luis Garcia, Nabil Crismatt and Taylor Rogers faced the flames, too. They did not allow a run and the only runner to reach third before extra innings, Marcell Ozuna, scampered there on a wild pitch.

No one, though, had more big moments than Crismatt.

The long reliever made a bid to become the team’s setup man for Rogers. He struck out four with no walks, striking out the side in the 10^th. To start that inning, Crismatt fielded a comebacker and gunned down Contreras, the inserted runner, at third.

When big at-bats arrived, Crismatt simply was bigger than those wielding lumber.

“One of my favorites this year because we pitch(ed), we hit, we do a little bit of everything in this series,” Crismatt said. “We come back when we were down. When we were down, we showed that we can go and tie the game again. … I’m looking forward to it continuing like this.”

The stat du jour — or des jours, in this case — was the offensive fight late. The Padres scored 12 runs in the eighth inning or after in the series, plating four in each game.

That level of consistency fixes many an early-game sin.

“One-hundred percent,” interim manager Ryan Christenson said. “I was just texting Bob (Melvin, the Padres manager who is recovering from prostate surgery) after the game about the grit the team is showing right now — the whole series, really.”

Best series of the season? Absolutely.