How Padres' Rays nightmare affected NL Wild Card standings, MLB playoff picture

The Padres had a playoff spot to protect and two very winnable games in their hands. Unfortunately they left Tampa Bay with neither. Their Aug. 30 5-4 loss in 11 innings completed a three-game sweep and dropped the Padres to a 72-65 record. The Diamondbacks are now a half game ahead of them for the final NL Wild Card spot. 

It’s a miserable return on a weekend in which the Padres had multiple chances to spare themselves of this exact conversation.

The immediate cost is easy to measure. A Sunday win would’ve put them at 73-64, half a game ahead of Arizona. The Friars have 25 games remaining, and it’ll be spent dueling it out with their division rivals.

Padres’ blown leads against Rays carry a steep playoff cost

The Cubs and Phillies, both 77-60, occupy the first two Wild Card spots, five games ahead of the Padres. Miami is still hanging around, too. At 69-68, the Marlins are 3 1/2 games behind San Diego.

Sunday offered a particularly aggravating explanation for how they got here. San Diego led 3-1 with two outs in the ninth before Jonny DeLuca’s drive to left field popped out of Samad Taylor’s glove and over the wall for a tying homer. The Padres then took a 4-3 lead in the 11th and lost that one, too, with Jorge Mateo delivering the walk-off single.

The Padres lost two leads, multiple times in their last two games over the weekend. Both losses were expensive considering their position in the standings.

We can spend time replaying Taylor’s collision with the wall ad nauseam. But the Padres still had a fresh chance to win in extra innings. They recovered enough to take the lead, then failed to protect it again. Not to mention the ejections of Fernando Tatis Jr. and manager Craig Stammen in the 7th. This was a team failure, and reducing the whole afternoon to one miserable bounce lets too much slide.

There is a potential climax for this race when Arizona visits Petco Park from Sept. 25-27 to close the regular season.

Those three games could decide the final Wild Card pot. They also create a tempting excuse to look ahead, as though the Padres can schedule their urgency for the last weekend. San Diego has 22 games to play before the two teams meet. Those count just as much, and they will determine whether that finale offers a chance to clinch.

The work starts with the three-game series in Cincinnati opening Aug. 31. The Padres can reclaim a playoff spot quickly. Holding it will require the kind of clean finish they couldn’t manage in Tampa Bay.

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