Coming off of a very tough loss to the Cardinals in which they had them down to their last strike at one point, the Padres looked to open the series against the Giants the right way. With Pedro Avila on the mound, San Francisco took a big lead in the third inning with 6 runs off of Avila. Mike Yastrzemski would add on in the fifth with a solo homer to make it 7-0 and further bury the Padres. Good pitching from the Giants would allow the Padres to score just 2 runs in the final 2 innings and fall short. A difficult month of August ended on a fitting note for San Diego, who have fallen off the rails.

Here are three takeaways from the loss:

Avila allows 6 in worst performance of the year

Pedro Avila has been nothing but reliable for the Padres thus far in the innings that he’s pitched, but the Giants were able to get to him in a big way on Thursday night. After a smooth first 2 innings, the Giants would take advantage of messy defense from the Padres to go on a scoring run. Errors from Matthew Batten and Manny Machado in the inning would allow San Francisco to keep getting runners on base as they strung together singles, doubles, and sacrifice flies. 6 runs would come across in the inning, while somehow only one of them would go down as an earned run on Avila’s line. He did, however, take his second loss and move to 0-2 on the season.

The inning was one of the ugliest for the Padres this season and perfectly symbolized their struggles. With a month yet to be played and San Diego knowing that they will most likely not be headed to the postseason, the team will still have to try their best to have a better month and finish the season in a more respectable fashion.

Padres impact players nowhere to be found

A similar story for the Padres continued in the series opener against the Giants as Manny Machado, Juan Soto, Xander Bogaerts, and Fernando Tatis Jr. failed to show up. They went a combined 3/13 in the game and struck out 4 times total. Their performances left the rest of the lineup responsible for trying to keep up with San Francisco’s early douse of runs. The team only managed to scrape together 2 runs total, as a Garrett Cooper double in the 8th and Ha-Seong Kim single in the 9th would bring the last runs of the game. Jakob Junis started the game for the Giants and set the tone with 4 scoreless innings to go alongside 3 strikeouts. Next up from the bullpen was Sean Manaea, who has most commonly been used as a starting pitcher. Nonetheless, he allowed just 1 run to score through the next 3.1 innings of the game and provided some nice innings for San Francisco. Eventually, Scott Alexander would close out San Diego and hand them the loss. Fans only continue to grow more frustrated and disappointed as their favorite star players fail to perform at a high level while the team racks up losses.

Padres gather 7 hits, fail to cash in with runners on base

Despite gathering just 3 hits more than the Padres (Giants: 10, Padres: 7), the Giants managed to pull out a 5-run margin of victory. A deeper look at the box score reveals that this is because of San Diego’s lack of success in the game with RISP. It is crucial to capitalize with runners on base, and the Padres simply did not gather hits at the right moments. Their 3-11 mark with RISP left them with many missed opportunities to score more runs and potentially climb back into the game. Ha-Seong Kim, Manny Machado, Gary Sanchez, Xander Bogaerts, Garret Cooper, and Fernando Tatis Jr. each had RISP opportunities and failed to make the most of their chances. The Giants, on the other hand, took better advantage of their hits as they put up a 4-10 (.400) night with RISP.

The Padres will look to clean up their defense and gather some more impact hits as they play again tomorrow in the second game of the series.

First pitch is scheduled for 6:40 p.m. PT.