Phillies’ offense sputters vs. Padres in first game back from the All-Star break

For 2½ weeks, from now through Aug. 1, everything that happens in baseball — wins, losses, hot streaks, cold spells, bumps, bruises — will be viewed through the prism of the trade deadline.

In that case, the Phillies’ biggest need was amplified Friday night.

Fresh off the four-day All-Star break, the Phillies returned to jam-packed Citizens Bank Park and let all the air out of the joint by recording one hit with a runner in scoring position and striking out 12 times in an ironing board-flat, 8-3 loss to the San Diego Padres.

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No. 5 starter Cristopher Sánchez mostly did his part, keeping the Phillies close for five innings. Three defensive lapses proved more annoying than costly. But a built-to-mash lineup stranded nine runners against Padres starter Yu Darvish and three relievers.

“It looked like they were a little rusty,” manager Rob Thomson said. “The ninth inning was encouraging.”

The Phillies scored twice in the ninth inning and loaded the bases with one out, forcing Padres manager Bob Melvin to use closer Josh Hader. But the rally fizzled in part because Trea Turner struck out before All-Star Nick Castellanos flew out with Bryce Harper on deck.

It was a snapshot of much of the season’s first half. The Phillies are 29-5 when they score more than four runs in a game. The problem: They’ve scored more than four runs in only 37.8% of their games.

The league average is 4.57 runs per game; the Phillies entered Friday at 4.51.

In the second half, the Phillies can reasonably expect Harper to slug more than three homers and Turner to reach base at better than a .295 clip. Even then, they’re at least one bat short of the dangerous offense they envisioned when they gathered for spring training with a healthy Rhys Hoskins.

“I feel good about our offensive performers. I don’t feel great about our offensive numbers so far,” president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said recently. “I feel like we have the capability of doing more.”

In the first meeting between the Phillies and Padres since Harper’s pennant-clinching homer last October, Darvish sliced and diced for six innings. He got a total of 13 swings and misses on six different pitches. He struck out Harper and Darick Hall with runners on second base in the first and fourth innings, respectively, and got around Kyle Schwarber’s one-out double in the fifth.

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The Phillies (48-42) can take solace in not being the Padres, who are 44-47 and grossly underachieving despite a star-studded lineup and bloated payroll. San Diego stands as a reminder that things can always be worse.

But the Padres also smashed four mammoth homers that totaled 1,593 feet. In the third inning, Fernando Tatis Jr. launched a 432-footer into the rarely reached second deck in left field against Sánchez. In the eighth, Juan Soto topped him with a 434-footer to right field — and a 32.2-second lap around the bases, the slowest trot of his career.

It was the kind of power display the Phillies envisioned for themselves. Instead, they came into the game ranked 18th in the majors in homers.

If the 44,028 paying customers wanted hometown fireworks, they had to wait until J.T. Realmuto’s garbage-time solo shot in the ninth inning, the only big blow before the postgame pyrotechnics.

The Phillies’ only other runs came via Alec Bohm’s two-out RBI double to right field in the fourth inning and a gift from Soto, who dropped Drew Ellis’ fly ball on the warning track in the ninth.

For the fourth start in a row, Sánchez completed five innings while keeping the Phillies in the game.

“That’s what you want from a fifth starter,” Thomson said before the game.

It’s a low bar. But given where Sánchez came from — 23 walks in a six-start span in triple A — the Phillies will happily keep taking it, especially considering their early-season struggle to find a No. 5 starter.

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But is Sánchez giving the Phillies enough that they won’t need to look for a starter before the Aug. 1 deadline?

“I don’t really focus on that,” Sánchez said. “I just focus on pitching well any time I get an opportunity to do so.”

Sánchez allowed three runs, all on two homers in the third inning. And both dingers — Gary Sánchez’s leadoff shot and Tatis’ two-run second-decker — came on changeups, an emerging pitch that has been central to his success.

“He was OK,” Thomson said. “He threw strikes again. Maybe one too many changeups to Gary Sánchez, and then it looked like Tatis was sitting all over the changeup first pitch. But five innings, three runs, we just didn’t swing the bats early.”

Maybe it was rust from the four-day break, but neither team was sharp defensively.

Hall booted a routine grounder to first base in the fifth inning, and Schwarber was unable to haul in a fly ball to the left-field warning track in the seventh. In the ninth inning, Soto gifted the Phillies a run when he couldn’t corral pinch hitting Ellis’ drive to the warning track in left.