Padres stomp A’s, Starling Marte shines in Oakland loss

San Diego starter Blake Snell kept Oakland hitters quiet and his bullpen followed his lead, holding down the A’s in an ugly 8-1 loss Tuesday night.

Oakland (60-48) had seven hits all night, and almost half of them belonged to newly-acquired center-fielder Starling Marte who went 3-for-4, a triple away from a cycle.

Marte put the A’s on the board in the fifth with a solo homer to left, the only Oakland run of the game on his first homer as an Athletic in his first home game. The A’s stole four bases and left eight runners stranded.

DH Tommy Pham quickly put the San Diego Padres (62-47) on the board with his nine-pitch leadoff at-bat that ended with a leadoff homer (12) and a 1-0 ballgame.

LHP Sean Manaea (L, 8-9, 3.26 ERA) had a tough second inning when a third pitch strike to Ha-Seong Kim was called a ball by home plate umpire Paul Clemons. The bad call became a bad inning after what should have been strike three became a next pitch single, and three more followed to make it 4-0. The Padres continued to pounce.

Manaea lasted 4-1/3 innings and allowed five Padres runs before he was relieved by Deolis Guerra to finish the fifth, but two more runs scored. Burch Smith kept the score 6-0 after a six-pitch sixth, but four singles in the seventh made it 8-1 before he threw a scoreless eighth.

The first two innings were the most exciting aside from the Marte homer in the fifth.

Bob Melvin said:

“Just a tough game with situational at bats. We got some guys on, we ran some, we put some pressure on, we got some guys on third with less than two outs, we just didn’t put good at-bats together in those situations… That was a little bit of an issue tonight but I don’t know if that cost us the game.”

Mark Canha led off the game with a single but he and Marte were left stranded. Josh Harrison singled in the second and two walks followed. The A’s had the bases loaded with one out in the second and couldn’t score. Canha flew out to right and Wil Myers threw out Harrison sliding home for a double-play to end the inning.

Notes

Ramon Laureano had two doubles. … The Padres had 14 hits and the A’s had seven. … The A’s have struggled to score with runners in scoring position and have struggled offensively but their newest members of the team combined for four of the six hits. … The Padres now lead the season series 2-1.

Simone McCarthy is SFBay’s Oakland Athletics beat writer. Follow @SFBay and @SimoneMcCarthy0 on Twitter and at SFBay.ca for full coverage of A’s baseball.