D-Backs bullpen blows lead, team swept by Padres

SAN DIEGO  With Dan Haren, Brandon Webb and Randy Johnson set to face the slumping last-place Padres, thoughts of a three-game sweep at Petco Park had to creep into the minds of the Diamondbacks before their series began.

Well, a sweep it was. But no one in their right mind was thinking about what wound up going down — a San Diego sweep after Wednesday’s 5-4 comeback win that wrote a perfect ending to a three-game road trip to forget.

“It’s a bit of a frustrating series,” Johnson said.

“The first day we were here, Haren pitched well and today ... for them to win both games and sweep us, the off day might be coming at the right time for us.”

Qualls latest to raise doubts about bullpen

Since sweeping the Padres last week in Arizona, the Diamondbacks have lost five of six games and a golden opportunity to expand the daylight between themselves and the rest of the National League West. Now they have to regroup for a huge three-game series against the Dodgers — who aren’t exactly on fire themselves — to close out August.

Los Angeles remained 3 games behind the D-Backs after losing 5-4 to Washington Wednesday night.

But first comes a day off and a welcome opportunity to regroup, something Arizona has a patent on this season.

“We’ve been through several periods like this where we’ve had to respond and we have,” Arizona manager Bob Melvin said. “Our division doesn’t look great, our record doesn’t look great … we’ve had a lot of games when we’ve been heartbroken. It’s been a problem all year, but we’ve responded.

“We obviously didn’t expect that this series with the pitchers we had going. You don’t foresee getting swept here. But we have to deal with it, we have to move on.”

The Arizona offense was finally nudged awake long enough to give Randy Johnson a four-run lead in the sixth inning, while Johnson had retired 10 of the last 11 hitters and seemed to be honing in on career win No. 295.

But a triple by Diamondback-killer Jody Gerut, and RBI single from Edgar Gonzalez with one out in the seventh started the trouble. Then 24-year-old rookie Nick Hundley, a Washington native and Mariners fan who grew up watching Johnson pitch in the Kingdome, followed with two-run homer that erased the cushion and chased the momentum from the Arizona dugout.

“The pitch to Hundley kind of came out of nowhere, the way he was pitching,” Melvin said. “He was cruising pretty well and then all of a sudden it’s 4-3 and it’s a completely different ballgame after that.”

A different ballgame, but one with an eerily familiar script.

The bullpen was handed a 4-3 lead in the eighth and four batters later, it was gone. Chad Qualls gave up a pinch single to Brian Giles, who scored on Chase Headley’s single one out later. Then Gerut, who had a walk-off homer Monday off Jon Rauch and had three more hits Wednesday, golfed what proved to be the game-winning hit.

Early on, it was a very familiar scene for Johnson: He allowed only two hits over the first five innings, but his teammates were helpless against Padres pitcher Cha Seung Baek — who had never won a game at Petco (0-7) and had a 6.29 ERA in nine home appearances.

But after managing all of 10 hits in the first 23 innings of this series — three of which came from pitchers — the D-Backs woke up. Chad Tracy and Adam Dunn stroked one-out singles and were chased home by a Miguel Montero triple to deep center. Chris Young doubled Montero home and Johnson capped the inning with his second hit of the day, an RBI single.

But win Johnson’s career win No. 295 wasn’t meant to be.