LOS ANGELES — Adrian Morejón made the pitch he was supposed to and got the result he was supposed to.
But that pitch might have begun the Padres’ final minute of relevance in 2026.
Because 58 seconds later, as Teoscar Hernández’s grand slam cleared the wall in left-center field, Dodger Stadium was literally rocking and the Padres were clearly shaken.
“Games like this, games like the last six nights, it’s not great,” second baseman Jake Cronenworth said late Friday night. “We’ve got to somehow turn it around, and me not making that play doesn’t help.”
He referred to a 4-3 loss to the Dodgers that ran the Padres’ losing streak to seven games, and he referred to his booting a double-play grounder in the seventh inning that immediately preceded Hernández’s homer.
“I lost this game,” Cronenworth said. “Simple as that.”
It was a bitter ending to a night that showed the potential of the Padres’ No.1 starter and their offense to keep the team contending.
Michael King worked six scoreless innings in the most economical way, and the Padres built a 3-0 lead by scoring in the first, fourth and sixth innings against Shohei Ohtani.
Then King’s command faltered at the start of the seventh inning, and the Padres’ season continued to slip away with it.
Two innings later, they were officially a sub-.500 team.
The Padres did not reach base against Edgardo Henriquez in the eighth or Tanner Scott in the ninth, meekly finishing off their 26th loss in the 40 games since they beat the Dodgers on May 18 to move into first place in the National League West.
The Padres were 29-18 at that point. They are now 43-44 and sit four games out of the final NL wild-card spot.
Their five losses on this road trip included a 23-3 drubbing Wednesday in Chicago and a 12-7 loss Thursday in a game they led 6-0 after two innings.
“They’re testing how we can handle the failures of the season and if we can come back,” manager Craig Stammen said of the recent results. “And I like the attitude of this team. I think we will come back. Right now, it stinks. It feels very awful. It’s a gut punch, but we’ve got to bounce back tomorrow and play our best game.”
That was what especially stung Friday. They played well.
King’s outing was the first in seven games by a Padres starting pitcher that lasted longer than 4⅔ innings. It was the first time in 10 games that a Padres starter made it through six innings.
But he began the seventh by walking Mookie Betts and yielding a soft single to Max Muncy.
Morejón was brought in to face Kyle Tucker and got him to hit what seemed to be a double-play grounder directly at Cronenworth, who hurried a bit too much and had the ball come out of his glove as he went to transfer it to his hand.
“Morejón coming into the game, I know a groundball is coming to me,” Cronenworth said. “I was anticipating it the whole time he walking in from the bullpen and I didn’t make the play and lost the game for us.”
That and the slider Morejón left thigh high and over the middle of the plate.
“Obviously, it’s frustrating,” Morejón said through interpreter Jorge Merlos. “You’re talking about a bullpen that everybody relies on, and unfortunately today it was my day that it hit me. We’re going through a rough spot. And it just feels even more difficult, not just for myself but especially the outing that Michael had out there and the way he was throwing. They call on me for those situations that I’ll be able to get out of it, and unfortunately it didn’t happen tonight.”
The normally loquacious and candid King was in no mood to discuss the outing in depth. For the first time in his three seasons with the Padres, his postgame answers were clipped and terse.
His pitches were doing what he wanted and going where he wanted for six innings, perhaps on par with his best outings of the season.
“Fine,” he said of his outing. “Didn’t win the game.”
While King frequently is of the opinion he should be left in a game, it seemed readily apparent he did not think he should have been taken out after 75 pitches.
“I wanted the next batter,” he said.
Stammen had other plans. He decided to try to ride Morejón and closer Mason Miller for the fional nine outs.
“Dominated,” Stammen said of King. “Great outing by him. One of his best. He had a tough one the last one, and he bounced back with one of his better ones. He knew we needed it, and he gave it to us. We just weren’t able to finish it off for him.
“It always makes it tougher when you have a lead late in the game and aren’t able to hold it and finish the game. He was very efficient with his pitch count and probably had more in the tank, but at that point we felt really good about going to our bullpen and using one of our best guys to get some of their left-handed hitters.”
Instead, after Morejón got through the seventh, Bradgley Rodriguez worked the seventh.
Where the Padres’ offense failed at the end, getting runners on first and second with one out in the seventh before making the final eighth outs in succession, it started well against Ohtani, who shut them out over five innings last month and entered the game with a 1.58 ERA.
The Padres scored the first run Ohtani surrendered in the first inning this season when Fernando Tatis Jr. and Cronenworth walked to start the game and Gavin Sheets drove in Tatis with a one-out single.
That hit also got Cronenworth to third, where he was stranded when Ty France and Jackson Merrill struck out.
All three pitches to Merrill were fastballs — the first and last at 100 mph, the middle one at 101.
Ohtani threw 29 pitches in the first and then retired the next eight batters on 34 pitches before Merrill came up with two outs in the fourth and homered to center field on a 100 mph fastball — on a 2-0 pitch that immediately followed Merrill winning an ABS challenge.
The Padres scored in the sixth on a two-out single by Merrill and Xander Bogaerts’ double.
King got through MLB’s most dangerous lineup in 30 pitches and without anyone reaching base before allowing his first hit — a two-out single by Freddie Freeman — in an eight-pitch fourth inning.
Against the Dodgers five days earlier at Petco Park, King navigated four innings having allowed a run on two hits and thrown strikes on nearly three-quarters of his 61 pitches. Then, in his words, he “fully lost it.”
He retired one of the six batters he faced, walked three, hit one and allowed a single as the Dodgers scored three runs and ran him from the game.
On Friday, King struck out two and added just 12 pitches in a 1-2-3 fifth inning and was at 68 pitches after stranding runners at first and second in the sixth.
Then came the end, with the Padres’ best starter unable to get an out and one of their best fielders making an error and one of their best relievers making a bad pitch.
“It’s a tough game and good opponent,” Stammen said. “Sometimes, things you think should always happen — it’s a game of failure and bouncing back, and tonight that kind of hurt us there in just that one inning, but we played eight other good innings. … It adds to the frustration of this last week of baseball for us. Those guys are very dependable players.”
