Braves swept by Padres, NL East lead down to 4.5 games

SAN DIEGO — Not too many people flee San Diego, the southern California city lauded for its beautiful scenery and weather. Then there are the Braves, who couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

A 5-2 loss Wednesday at Petco Park gave the Padres a three-game sweep of the NL East-leading Braves who have now dropped 10 of 13 games and four in a row for the first time this season. They recently had a sizable divisional lead over the rival Phillies, but that lead has dwindled to 4 1/2 games after the Braves lost their ninth straight game in “America’s Finest City.”

“Teams we’re playing are catching us at a good time for them,” Braves manager Walt Weiss said. “It’s all about when you play teams, it’s really not necessarily who you’re playing, it’s always about when you play teams in this league. And they’re catching us at a good time. We’re down right now. We’re struggling a little bit on both sides, pitching and scoring runs. It’s not going to last, but the other teams are catching us a little short right now.”

The Braves (48-31) never led Wednesday, and when the three-game series had ended they had scored a whopping eight runs. Weiss’ team has a welcome off day Thursday in San Francisco before facing the Giants for three games starting Friday at Oracle Park.

The Giants have already beaten the Braves twice this season before a third game of the series between the two teams last week in Atlanta was rained out.

“Off days are always good for a reset,” Weiss said. “But we gotta go into San Francisco and we gotta play well. We gotta turn it around. We gotta go in there and win that series.”

The Padres jumped out to a lead Wednesday in the third inning when first baseman Ty France golfed a 1-1 changeup from Braves starter Martín Pérez 417 feet into left field.

Pérez put himself in a jam in the fourth with a pair of walks and a single. He was able to get out of it by allowing a single run on an RBI sacrifice fly by France to the gap in right that a diving Eli White caught.

That fourth inning took its toll on Pérez, however, as the lefty had to throw 31 pitches. When he came back out in the fifth, he walked Fernando Tatis Jr. and was lifted after Samad Taylor’s bunt single.

Pérez (6-4) matched his season high for walks with four, and 40 of his 82 pitches missed the strike zone.

“I walked too many guys today and got behind too much,” Pérez said. “Sometimes you don’t have your best stuff but you gotta go out there and compete”

James Karinchak took over for Pérez and struck out Manny Machado. But after a double steal, Xavier Bogaerts popped a fly ball into shallow right that found grass for what would go in the box score as an RBI single making it 3-0.

The Padres (42-37) had called up pitcher JP Sears for Wednesday’s game and the veteran left-hander, who had a 7.92 ERA at Triple-A El Paso in 14 starts this season, shut out the Braves for 6 2/3 innings before his one and only mistake that turned out to be his final pitch of the night.

A 1-0 changeup hung in the middle of the plate for catcher Joey Bart who crushed it 389 feet into the second level of the Western Metal Supply Company building beyond the left field wall. Bart’s first homer as a Braves cut the deficit to 3-2.

“Wish I could have came through a couple more times you know what I mean? And all of us collectively” Bart said of his homer. “We’ll just be ready to play in San Francisco.

“There’s a lot of winners in this clubhouse, guys that know how to win. I think that’s something that teams like this possess. Only a certain amount of teams in the league really possess it. A lot of these guys have done it, so we know how to bounce back after tough series and be ready to go.”

Momentum was short-lived for the visitors.