Calamity followed the Padres home.
A day after losing a five-run lead in the eighth inning in Colorado, the Padres went down big early and lost 9-3 to the Phillies on Friday night at Petco Park.
The Phillies came to town hot, having won eight of their past 10 games largely on the strength of their pitching. A lineup full of sluggers had struggled to some extent.
They battered Joe Musgrove from the start, with Kyle Schwarber leading off the game with a high fly ball that landed on the other side of the right field wall and Bryce Harper, Brandon Marsh and Nick Castellanos hitting no-doubt homers in the third inning.
"It's a good team, tough lineup," said Musgrove, who had never allowed four homers in a game. "There are holes there. I just didn't find them enough tonight. All the guys they said were cold didn't seem cold tonight."
The Phillies also scored in the first inning on a pair of doubles and preceded one of the third-inning homers with a double. Not until their eighth hit, with one out in the fourth inning, did they have a single.
Where Friday certainly justified some concern about the lack of consistency from Musgrove, one of the team's most important pieces, it could have been worse in the short term.
The Padres bullpen had to cover 6⅓ innings in Thursday’s 10-9 loss to the Rockies after Randy Vásquez could not make it through the third.
Musgrove, who had turned in quality starts in his previous two starts, was able to get into the fourth on Friday, and Jeremiah Estrada covered 2⅓ innings after him before Tom Cosgrove and Stephen Kolek finished the game.
"Very pleased with what Estrada did," Padres manager Mike Shildt said. "... He grabbed two-plus. Didn't love having to bring Tommy in, but he's our freshest guy with the righties, (and) that's kind of where we were. But he was able to gut through, get a little bit. And Kolek, huge eighth and ninth to make sure we didn't use another guy."
Shildt had tried to hold off as long as he could. No matter how much the Padres believe they can come back from any deficit, they were facing Aaron Nola, who entered the game having allowed a total of five runs in his previous four starts.
The priority once the Phillies went up 6-0 was surviving the night while burning through as few arms as possible.
The phone did not ring in the bullpen until after the third home run of the third inning.
Musgrove was able to get the next two outs to end the third. But with the right-hander having passed 80 pitches, Estrada began warming up as Musgrove was getting the first out of the fourth inning.
"Starters like Joe, they struggle early, kind of give them the benefit of doubt of settling down," Shildt said. "Plus, they know the gig. They know that they've got to carry the mail a little bit. ... He was able to go out and grab and (get into the fourth). Because when you're at home, you know you got nine (innings), so that extra inning was big for us. Him (being) able to get through that, as much as he could give us, was really important."
Estrada, recalled from Triple-A on Friday, would enter with two down and a runner on second after Trea Turner singled and stole second on Harper’s strikeout.
Alec Bohm greeted Estrada with an RBI single to left field before Estrada ended the inning with a long fly ball out.
The right-hander allowed just a walk while getting the next six outs.
The Phillies went up 9-1 on J.T. Realmuto’s two-run homer off Cosgrove in the seventh. Kolek took over for Cosgrove after the first two batters reached base in the eighth.
Schwarber’s homer and two-out doubles by Bohm and Marsh had started the evening ominously for Musgrove.
He is occasionally more hittable in the first inning before settling into starts. But he never settled in Friday.
"Two or three nine-pitch at-bats, couple walks, just ran my pitch count up and didn't really give me a chance to stay in there," he said.
Manny Machado, playing third base for the first time since Aug. 31, 2023, helped Musgrove out with one of his signature plays to save a run and end the first inning.
With runners at second and third, Castellanos grounded a ball down the line that Machado backhanded and fired across the diamond on one bounce to first baseman Jake Cronenworth.
That kept the score 2-0.
Musgrove (3-3, 6.94) worked around a two-out walk in the second before having his night blown up in the third.
The Padres falling a game under .500 (14-15) was all but inevitable at that point. Nola is part of a rotation that in the 10 games leading up to Friday had combined for eight quality starts and a 0.83 ERA.
Nola (4-1, 3.20) took seven pitches to get through the first inning and three pitches to get the first two outs of the second before Ha-Seong Kim worked a seven-pitch walk. That was followed by Luis Campusano’s single and a drive to the wall by Graham Pauley that was caught by Castellanos.
After a lead-off single by Jose Azocar and two-out double by Cronenworth in the third inning got the Padres on the board, Nola retired nine consecutive batters.
He would strike out 10 over eight innings. Among the seven hits he allowed was Pauley’s two-run homer, launched 419 feet to straightaway center in the seventh, which provided the final margin.
"Tough sledding when a guy's commanding the ball to both sides of the plate, changing speeds," Shildt said. "He was pretty much pitching where he wanted to. He's on the corners a lot. ... It was nice pitching performance by him. One of the better ones we've seen this year."
This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune .
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