Padres manager Jayce Tingler has one foot out the door after 16-inning loss vs. Dodgers

After the longest MLB game in two years, the San Diego Padres came up a bit short.

The Padres did enough to win the ballgame after Blake Snell tossed a gem through seven innings with a 1-0 lead, but manager Jayce Tingler’s questionable decisions all contributed to the 5-3 loss in 16 innings.

With the Padres up 1-0 in the eighth inning, Tingler kept his ace out to toss an eighth inning as he approached the 100-pitch mark. As he hurled pitch 116 on the night, Snell made his lone mistake of the evening and catcher Will Smith took him deep.

This decision obviously makes more sense in hindsight. There’s no issue trusting your ace, especially when he’s been pitching as well as Snell has all night, but had Tingler swapped him out for Daniel Hudson and trusted his bullpen, who also pitched phenomenally in extra innings, the Padres likely would have won the game.

The more questionable decisions came later in the game when Jake Marisnick entered the game for Wil Myers for defensive purposes in the ninth inning.

Again, this is another move that made sense at the time but would really prove costly down the stretch.

The issue with the move isn’t putting Marisnick in the game, but taking him out of the game after just one inning for Tommy Pham was not the right decision.

Pham hit right in front of Adam Frazier, who has been arguably the player struggling the most at the plate in the Padres lineup and it allowed the Dodgers to take advantage and intentionally walk Pham to get to Frazier, who finished the night 1-for-6.

The decision also proved costly because it knocked out a position player and forced Tingler to pinch hit right in the middle of the batting order in the 5-hole after swapping out catcher Austin Nola for Victor Caratini, who pinch hit in the 9-spot for reliever Craig Stammen in the 10th inning.

The decision to pull Marisnick snowballed into a losing formula for the Padres, because it took away that fifth batter and allowed the Dodgers to intentionally walk Manny Machado and Jake Cronenworth, arguably the two best chances to win the game, not once, but twice.

It came down to Joe Musgrove and Ryan Weathers to win the game at the plate, and that’s a game where the odds are not in the Padres’ favor.

The team addressed the need for a shake-up earlier in the week by firing pitching coach Larry Rothschild and it was supposed to act as a wake-up call for the whole team.

The pitching staff saved the game several times for the Padres last night, but Tingler could not help himself to fumble it on his own.

He’s running out of people to point the finger at and if the Padres miss the playoffs, this game could be a reason why and grounds for moving on to the next manager.