LOS ANGELES — The reality check ended with a heartbreaker.
But not a backbreaker.
“We’re still aiming to win the division,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said late Sunday afternoon. “We’re going to face them next week. A lot of baseball left. And with this team, we can do anything.”
The Padres on Sunday battled back little by little, got even in the top of the eighth inning, and then ran into the same old L.A. story.
Mookie Betts’ home run leading off the bottom of the eighth inning against Robert Suarez was the difference in a 5-4 Dodgers victory that completed a sweep that flipped the order atop the National League West.
The three games here this weekend — no matter the valid context provided by there being six weeks remaining in the season — were a missed opportunity for the Padres.
“It’s tough,” Xander Bogaerts said. “We came in one game up in the division, and now it’s not in our hands anymore.”
It slipped from their hands with a 2-0 fastball that Suarez, pitching at the start of the eighth inning for the first time this season, left over the inner third of the plate and was sent by Betts to the bleachers beyond left field.
The Padres arrived here having won 14 of 17 games. That included winning their previous five games while the Dodgers lost four straight, putting the Padres up by a game in a division the Dodgers have won 11 of the past 12 years.
The Padres now trail by two games as they return home for a four-game series against the Giants before three more against the Dodgers beginning Friday.
After that, both teams will have 31 games remaining in the regular season.
“This isn’t over yet,” Freddy Fermin said. “We have several games left and games left against the Dodgers.”
The first of their two consecutive weeks playing only the Giants and Dodgers began with a three-game sweep in San Francisco in which the Padres played nearly perfect baseball. They did not do so at Dodger Stadium, while the hosts got back to looking like the team that led the division by nine games on July 3.
“Very satisfying, considering where we were four days ago,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “Just the way we ramped up the focus, the intensity and obviously winning three ballgames here — tight ballgames, well-played games — to come out of it with three wins is huge.”
The Dodgers’ starting pitchers were better. The Dodgers got more timely hits and hits that went farther, including home runs by Freddy Freeman and Andy Pages in Sunday’s first inning. The Dodgers took advantage of more mistakes over the course of winning the first and last game by a run and the middle game 6-0.
A day after they scored three runs in the first inning against Dylan Cease, the Dodgers took a 4-0 lead against Yu Darvish in the first inning Sunday.
Unlike Saturday, the Padres battled back, and the Dodgers went six innings without scoring against Yu Darvish and three relief pitchers.
In the end, the Padres left too many men at second and third base.
“Just couldn’t get the proverbial big hit,” manager Mike Shildt said after his team went 2-for-14 with runners in scoring position. “But man, fought our tail off to come back. Could have easily said, ‘You know what, it’s not our day again’ (when we were) down four. And the fight just came back. That’s why this team will be just fine starting again tomorrow.”
Seven of the Padres’ 10 hits went for extra bases. Another should have.
A day after three of the first four outs they made were on attempted steals of second base, a Padres baserunner did not run hard the entire way and was thrown out at second base.
A walk and two hits made it 4-1 in the third inning, but Tatis’ RBI double in that inning should have scored two runs.
Jake Cronenworth began the inning with a walk and moved to third base on a long drive to right-center field by Fermin, who slowed down while rounding first base before picking up his pace on his way to second, where he was thrown out on what had appeared a certain double.
“To be honest, I thought it was out,” Fermin said. “And then I realized and knew I had to … try to get an extra base.”
Tatis followed with a double to almost the same spot, scoring Cronenworth before Luis Arraez and Manny Machado grounded out to end the inning.
Besides that should-have, there were a couple could-haves. And Machado was involved in a few more.
He and Jackson Merrill struck out in the first inning after Arraez’s one-out double. And Machado grounded out in the fifth after Arraez’s two-out double.
The latter failure by Machado came on Dodgers starter Tyler Glasnow’s final pitch.
The Padres got to 4-3 in the sixth on a pair of doubles by left-handed batters Gavin Sheets and Ryan O’Hearn against left-hander Anthony Banda.
Sheets, in the game for Merrill, who had played the past two days with what appeared to be a sprained left ankle, led off the inning by grounding a double down the left field line. He scored when O’Hearn flared a one-out double down the other line.
When Cronenworth grounded into a fielder’s choice and Fermin struck out looking, the Padres were 2-for-10 with runners in scoring position. They would finish 3-for-20 in the series after a few more missed opportunities.
In the seventh inning, Arraez blooped a one-out single into center field and stole second base with Machado at the plate before Machado flied out to left field and Sheets grounded out.
Laureano’s one-out double off Alexis Díaz in the eighth prompted Roberts to go to left-hander Alex Vesia and Shildt to pinch-hit for the left-handed-hitting Cronenworth with Jose Iglesias.
With Bogaerts, who had been hit by a pitch to start the inning, on third and Laureano on second, Iglesias tied the game with a groundout that scored Bogaerts before Fermin made the final out on a comebacker to Vesia.
Vesia retired the top of the Padres’ order — Tatis, Arraez and Machado — in the ninth.
Machado had a car waiting for his return to San Diego and declined to speak on his way out of the clubhouse.
“Obviously, we didn’t play our best,” Tatis said. “So regroup and get it going next series.”
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