Good morning,

Just two of the eight playoff contenders in the National League won yesterday.

That does not make the Padres’ recent struggles any less real, but it perhaps makes them less dire.

For now.

“You can say, ‘Hey, it’s baseball,’” Ryan O’Hearn said yesterday. “Sometimes you go through tough stretches.”

I wrote as much in yesterday’s newsletter ( here ) when I detailed how most teams that end up going to the World Series do so after enduring bad stretches near the end of the season.

That said, the Padres have lost eight of their past 10 games and in that time have lost ground to every team around them — those they are chasing and those chasing them.

The Padres were 74-56 and atop the NL West on Aug. 23. Here is a snapshot of what has happened since:

Time is running out on

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