The paying customers showed up en masse again Monday, enough of them to make the gathering at Petco Park the 33rd sellout among the 37 home games the Padres have played this season.
James Wood noted afterward, “A great park, a great atmosphere.”
The boos that rained down after Josh Bell hit a single that drove in the Nationals’ sixth run were arguably louder than any heard at Petco Park this season.
By the time Wood, the former Padres prospect who went to Washington in 2022 in the trade for Juan Soto, hit a three-run homer that clanged off the right field foul pole in the eighth inning to put the almost-final touch on the Nationals’ 10-6 victory, there was no real overt reaction. And by the time Fernando Tatis Jr. launched a three-run homer with two outs in the ninth inning to make the final score deceivingly close, the ballpark wasn’t a quarter full.
The Padres’ downfall was on this night mostly because their starting pitcher lost it midgame and most of the other pitchers they used never had it and because a talented but grossly inexperienced team had the kind of game it is capable of.
“The young players they have are extremely talented,” Jake Cronenworth said. “It can be super dangerous if you’re not on your game.”
The fact remains, however, that the Padres have not been able to put together winning baseball consistently for most of this month.
Losing to a team that doesn’t win very often only serves to make it seem worse.
The Padres (42-36) won seven of their nine games from May 25 through June 3. A loss Monday dropped them to 7-12 since then.
They went into Monday with a chance to win a third straight game for the first time since the first three days of June. Instead, they became just the third team the Nationals would beat in their past 16 games.
Washington (32-46) scored four runs in the fourth inning against Stephen Kolek and two in the fifth against Kolek and Wandy Peralta.
“There was definitely a lack of execution going into that fourth,” Kolek said. “… Overall, level of execution just was not good enough. They’re obviously a talented group there. Top of the lineup, there are some guys who can really do some damage there. Bottom of the lineup is scrappy. Sometimes you can tip your cap and say, ‘Talented young hitters.’ … I need to do a better job of making the adjustments on the fly and buckling down on the execution.”
In between the Nationals racking up nine hits in those two innings, Manny Machado hit a solo home run.
The Padres added a run in the sixth, and Cronenworth’s homer leading off the seventh got them to 6-3.
Wood’s blast, his 22nd of the season, was followed in the ninth by one from Bell, who accompanied Soto to San Diego at the trade deadline in ‘22. Both of those came against Yuki Matsui.
Kolek entered the game with a 2.86 ERA over his previous four starts and was coming off a quality start at Dodger Stadium.
The Nationals’ only baserunner in the first three innings came on Daylen Lile’s lead-off walk in the third, and he overslid second base on a steal attempt and was tagged for the final out of that inning.
But in the fourth, Kolek’s pitches suddenly stopped going where they were supposed to and stopped moving quite as well as they usually do.
After throwing 40 pitches over the first three innings, he took 33 to get through the fourth.
And the Nationals led 4-0.
It began with a chopper in front of the mound by CJ Abrams, the former Padres shortstop and No.1 prospect who also went to Washington as part of the Soto trade.
Kolek grabbed the ball with his bare hand, threw quickly — too quickly — toward first base but well up the line. Cronenworth, playing first base, never had a chance to make the catch, and the ball bounced to the side wall as Abrams ran to second on the first error Kolek committed in the major leagues.
Wood followed with a single to left field to put the Nationals up 1-0.
“It’s always fun whenever James is driving me in,” said Abrams, who was also on base for Wood’s homer. “It’s an electric stadium. Playing in front of Padres fans is always fun.”
Wood moved to third on a double by Luis Garcia Jr. and scored on a single by Nathaniel Lowe.
The first out of the inning, a fly ball to center field by Bell, also brought in a run. And Riley House, making his eighth career start, followed with an RBI single.
Abrams, Wood, Garcia, Lowe and Bell would single in succession with one out in the sixth to make it 6-0.
“It was great,” said Wood, the Padres’ second pick in 2021 draft. “A really nice park, a great fan base. It’s the team I got drafted by, so I definitely did take a little second today. It was cool. A great park, a great atmosphere.”
Machado’s seventh home run in June — five more than any other Padres player — leading off the bottom of the fourth got the Padres on the board.
That was the sixth ball the Padres put in play at 100 mph or harder, but just the second hit. On the night, the Padres would go 5-for-12 on balls put in play with an exit velocity of at least 100 mph. The Nationals were 7-for-8.
“We hit a ton of balls hard,” Cronenworth said. “They also hit a ton of balls hard. Theirs just happened to go through.”
The Padres’ second run came on a single by Jackson Merrill, walk by Xander Bogaerts and an RBI single by Gavin Sheets in the sixth inning.
Parker, a left-hander whose 5.93 ERA in his first six road starts was third-worst in the National League, would finish six innings having allowed just the two runs before he surrendered Cronenworth’s home run leading off the seventh and was replaced.
Tatis would homer off Zach Brzykcy. And a walk by Merrill prompted Nationals manager Dave Martinez to bring in closer Kyle FInnegan to face Machado, who popped out to end the game.
Originally Published: June 23, 2025 at 9:38 PM PDT