Padres continue to slide as defense gifts winning run to Cubs

The Padres knew they would have to take the bad with the good when allowing young talent to blossom.

Their resolve to be patient with rookies such as Fernando Tatis Jr. and Francisco Mejia didn’t make it any easier Friday to absorb a 6-5 loss to the Cubs that the pair literally threw away.

Not after more than three hours playing at Wrigley Field, on an afternoon where the heat index was 102 at first pitch and 109 by the last one, out-hitting their hosts and twice coming back from a run down.

But sometimes those capable of being spectacular stumble in the course of being so.

“Couple young guys playing really fast trying to do special things, and sometimes those plays just aren’t there,” manager Andy Green said. “If you’re going to make mistakes in the field, mistakes of aggression are the better kind of mistakes.”

The Padres actually expected more of this from the 20-year-old Tatis. But until a rash of gaffes lately, his contributions have made jaws drop far more than they’ve made teeth clench.

He clearly sees the game differently than most other people and can play it faster than even most other major leaguers. He emphatically differed in his interpretation of what happened Friday.

Tatis said he’d do what he did again, fielding a slow grounder in front of second and throwing across his body on the run.

“Same ground ball comes again,” he said, “just make a good throw.”

His manager and at least one veteran teammate indicated Tatis made a poor decision.

“That was one out,” Green said.

To Tatis, it was a physical error he made.

“If I miss, I miss,” he said. “If I do the right thing people are going to be happy. It’s one or the other. So I was going to go for the better one.”

That’s certainly a topic the Padres will continue to address.

As for Friday, Tatis was not alone in the game quickly unraveling.

The defense that made so many plays the first half of the season, the one that often features three Gold Glove winners and a shortstop certainly capable of winning the award someday, committed two errors in the span of three batters.

The loss was the Padres’ sixth in seven games since the All-Star break and dropped them a season-worst five games below .500 (46-51).

They have made nine errors in the past four games. That includes four in the past three by Tatis, whose attempt to start a double play with a throw to second base sailed into center field and put runners at second and third against Padres reliever Craig Stammen in the eighth inning.

The Padres intentionally walked Jason Heyward to load the bases with one out.

David Bote chopped a grounder to Manny Machado, who threw home to easily get the force out. But Mejia chose to use his strong arm to try to get Bote at first, something that was not going to happen if Mejia had fired the ball with an actual cannon.

Mejia’s low throw bounced off Eric Hosmer’s glove and skidded to shallow right field as Addison Russell all but jogged home. Hosmer was charged with the error, his seventh of the season. The four-time Gold Glove winner had not made more than six in a season since 2014.

“I should have been anticipating anything that can happen,” said Hosmer, who acknowledged the throw surprised him. “I just wasn’t. It’s a ball I should have come up with.”

Josh Naylor had just tied the game 5-5 with a pinch-hit solo homer in the top of the eighth.

The Padres got 12 hits and scored four runs in Cubs starter Jon Lester’s six innings. Naylor’s homer would be their only hit after Lester left, which still gave them six more than the Cubs. The Padres took a 3-0 lead on Hunter Renfroe’s sacrifice fly in the first inning and Machado’s two-run homer in the second, lost the lead in the third, got to 4-4 in the fifth, went down again in the fifth and tied it again at 5-5 in the eighth.

They also left the bases loaded in the first, wasted runners at the corners with one out in the fourth and a runner on second with two outs in the fifth and eighth.

In the ninth, Cubs closer Craig Kimbrel walked Franmil Reyes with one out before striking out Hosmer and Mejia to end the game.

Padres starting pitcher Eric Lauer got two outs into the fifth inning before leaving his first game since his father died fewer than two weeks ago.

The 23-year-old left-hander was a strike away from getting out of his third scoreless inning when Albert Almora Jr. lined a single off the small of Lauer’s back.

Javier Baez followed with an infield single deep to the hole on the left side, and Lauer walked University of San Diego alumnus Kris Bryant before former Padre Anthony Rizzo pounded a fastball in the middle of the zone just into the bleachers beyond left field for his fourth career grand slam.

“It could have been a better pitch, obviously,” Lauer said of the 366-foot fly ball. “When he first hit it, I thought there was no chance it was going out of the stadium. So I tip my cap to him.”

Reyes’ second single of the game came with one out in the fifth inning. He moved to second base on Hosmer’s groundout to second and to third on a wild pitch. Mejia tied the game by turning on a 3-1 cutter a couple inches off the plate — nothing for him — and driving it on a line off the ivy-covered wall down the left field line for a double.

Baez’s one-out shot 15 rows up in the right field bleachers put the Cubs back on top, 5-4, in the bottom of the fifth.

Lauer got Bryant on a hard fly ball to right and then with his 85^th pitch walked Rizzo.

Lauer, who rejoined the team in Miami on Tuesday and was activated off the bereavement list Wednesday, allowed five runs on six hits and three walks. He struck out seven.

Luis Perdomo retired all seven batters he faced after relieving Lauer.

Naylor pinch hit for him and greeted new Cubs reliever Pedro Strop with a line drive to the batter’s eye in center field that tied the game.

Strop, who gave up a 448-foot homer hit at 107 mph, got the win. Stammen, who allowed a single at 81.7 mph, got the loss.

Friday was the fifth time the Padres have lost in their past eight one-run games, following a stretch in which they won seven such games in a row. The last four one-run losses have featured a Padres error that contributed to at least one run.

“Here recently some of those tight games have slipped away, mostly from a defensive standpoint,” Green said. “Mistakes of aggression we can live with, grow from and continue to get better.”