With 17 games left to play and a trip to the playoffs well within their grasp, this is the time of year the Padres should really be trying to flip the proverbial switch and play their best baseball.

Any time now, fellas.

San Diego's bats failed to show up again and one bad inning from starter J.P. Sears sunk the Friars in a 4-2 loss to the lowly Rockies on Friday night, the fourth straight game in which the Padres scored exactly two runs.

Things started off with plenty of promise. In the first inning Manny Machado, mired in a 2-for-30 slump, detonated a 415-foot home run into the Western Metal Supply building in left field. Machado had a pair of hits and reached base three times. However, the rest of the club combined had three hits, struck out 12 times (four of them by Fernando Tatis J

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