An offense that's been offensive is dooming the Padres chances

Only Adrian Gonzalez, who leads the team by wide margins in average, HR and RBIs, has produced consistently at the plate for San Diego. Robert Beck/SI

ATLANTA -- In a flash of Adrian Gonzalez's lumber, the ball, as often happens with the other team but rarely with the Padres these days, practically exploded off the bat, rushing toward the seats deep down the right field line at Turner Field. It was one of those no-doubt-about-it shots, a game-breaker, maybe a game-winner. The crowd in Atlanta on this Tuesday night sucked in a deep, anxious breath. Brian Giles, Gonzalez's San Diego teammate, bounced off of second and into a trot toward home. Surely, the Padres were about to take the lead in the ninth inning.

Then somewhere along the way, the seemingly sure thing suddenly wasn't, curving slowly, agonizingly foul. The crowd exhaled. Five pitches later, Gonzalez struck out. And the Padres, once again, ended the game with a whimper.

That's how it's been this early season for San Diego, one of the most inept offensive teams to stumble out of the starting gate in years. The Padres can look completely capable for brief, optimistic moments. They can, on the odd occasion, look close to good.

But things too often end up very, very foul for San Diego. So foul that the Padres, not even six weeks into the season, are already in real danger of getting pushed out of the postseason picture altogether.

"Our offensive success," says the Padres' manager, Bud Black, "is based upon the whole body doing what they're capable of doing. We don't have the one or two guys that can shoulder the burden. We don't have that one player who can carry a team for a week to 10 days, who's hitting homers, knocking runs in, scoring runs, that whole thing.

"We need our guys to rise up to their track records. If they do that, we'll be able to score enough runs to win games."

The problem, of course, is that the Padres haven't been doing anything close to that. After coming within three outs of winning the National League West title last season on two occasions, this year's Padres have dug themselves a MLB-worst 10-game hole in the division, which is currently ruled by the team with the best record in baseball (the Diamondbacks). Meanwhile, at 12-22 the Padres have the game's worst record.

Those results have been maddening for San Diego fans and something between peculiar and borderline amusing for everyone else. With only one player (Gonzalez) being a consistent threat, the Padres own the lowest batting average in the NL (.231), the lowest on-base percentage (a sickening .302) and the lowest slugging percentage (an anemic .339), all of them by a large margin. They average a baseball-low 3.32 runs a game. The last time an NL team scored fewer than 3 ½ runs a game over the course of a full season was in 1992, when the 99-loss Dodgers scored 3.38 a game. This Padres team could do that.

More galling than the sheer numbers, or lack of them -- which are bad enough to bring out the boos in a normally forgiving Southern California place like San Diego -- is the way the Padres' lineup has managed to not score runs. They are remarkably, even for a poor offensive team, un-clutch. They have the lowest batting average in the league with runners in scoring position (.230, tied with the Giants). With two outs and runners in scoring position, they're hitting just .197 (the Brewers, Mets and Reds are worse). And in late and close situations -- defined as in the seventh inning or later with the score tied, with the tying run on deck or the hitting team ahead by a run -- the Padres are hitting .180, a whopping 31 points lower than the next-worst team.

Much of the Padres' weak output can, in fact, be blamed on playing half their games in San Diego's Petco Park, a place where runs are infamously hard to come by. But the Padres have not only struggled at home -- .214, with a .584 OPS -- they've had a hard time of it on the road, where they thrived last season. San Diego is hitting .246, with a .690 OPS on the road. That's 21 points under their average last year and 73 points off their OPS.

Here's the latest example of the Padres' futility: Against the Braves on Wednesday night, they scored just two runs. One came when Atlanta starter Tim Hudson balked a runner home. The other crossed when third baseman Kevin Kouzmanoff bounced into a double play.

It was the 16th time this season the Padres have scored two or fewer runs. That's almost half of the games the Padres have played.

"We're getting our opportunities," the team's general manager, Kevin Towers, insists. "We just haven't been able to cash in on them."

The avalanche of missed chances already has buried the Padres. Since dropping a 22-inning killer to the equally disappointing Rockies on April 17 -- after more than six hours, the Padres finally lost, 2-1 -- San Diego is 4-14.