SAN DIEGO — The Padres can’t say for certain when Mike Clevinger will pitch again. Their offense also remains MIA. And at this point it’s hard to say which is more concerning.
Eric Hosmer mashed his first home run since returning from a broken finger, but the Padres lost the playoff ace they’d stashed up their sleeve in the first inning to an apparent injury and mustered little else at the plate in a 5-2 loss to the Angels on Wednesday, an all-around dud to close their regular-season home schedule.
It was their fifth loss in seven games and their second straight since clinching their first postseason berth since 2006 on Sunday.
The Padres have have not inched any closer to securing home-field advantage in next week’s best-of-three wild-card round since then.
Any combination of two Padres wins or Cardinals losses will do the trick.
What wakes up this slumbering offense is anyone’s guess as the Padres were hitting .194 with a .303 on-base percentage over a six-game stretch heading into Wednesday’s matinee.
It certainly wasn’t an early jolt from Hosmer
Manny Machado doubled with two outs in the first inning and Hosmer swatted an 0-1 fastball from Angels starter Jaime Barria off the façade of the second deck of the Western Metal Supply Co. to give the Padres an early 2-0 lead.
It was just his second hit in 12 at-bats since returning from the injured list.
Yet whatever boost that provided had been wiped away by the time Clevinger — who’d missed his previous start with biceps tightness — exited with an apparent injury after just one inning.
Given how crisp he was, Clevinger’s exit was a surprise. He needed 12 pitches to dismiss the Angels in the first. Seven were strikes. His fastball sat 93-95 mph. His slider finished off strikeouts of David Fletcher to start the game and Mike Trout to finish the inning.
Then Clevinger walked into the dugout and perhaps out of postseason plans that hinged a great deal on the 29-year-old right-hander bolstering the rotation for a deep playoff run.
Pressed into early action, left-hander Adrian Morejon walked Anthony Rendon to start the second inning. Shohei Ohtani and Justin Upton followed with back-to-back homers and Anthony Bemboom added a one-out shot.
Just like that, the Angels had doubled up on Hosmer’s two-run homer.
The Angels tacked on a run in the sixth inning when a replay review in New York ruled that that the ball popped out of Tommy Pham’s glove on a would-be, inning-ending diving catch in left field. Instead, the Angels were granted a 5-2 lead on a Fletcher single off Craig Stammen.
The Padres, meanwhile, collected just three more hits between the second and eighth innings before staging a ninth-inning uprising.
It started with leadoff single from Hosmer. Tommy Pham’s ensuing single brought the tying run to the plate.
But Wil Myers and Greg Garcia both popped out and pinch-hitter Mitch Moreland had a single taken away by a diving Trout in center field to end the game.
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