The Padres are 4-0 for the second time in their 57 years of being a Major League Baseball team.

In that 97.5% of this season remains, it is far more significant how they got there.

Simply put, Sunday’s 5-0 victory against the Braves completed just about as close to a flawless four days as there can be in a game in which perfection over any length of time is impossible.

“We got a lot of stuff going our way, but whatever the game asked in this series, we didn’t miss,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said. “We played as clean of baseball as I’ve seen in a very long time.”

Nick Pivetta came close to achieving perfection across seven scoreless innings Sunday, during which he faced the minimum 21 batters.

“Welcome to San Diego, Nick Pivetta,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said. “I mean, dominated counts. … Got some early outs, which allowed him to go seven innings. Really masterful game.”

The Padres’ intense new pitcher stalked around the mound and the infield grass and to and from the dugout. He wasted little time between pitches and little time getting through the Braves.

“Nick’s into it, man,” Shildt said. “Nick’s getting after it.”

Pivetta purposefully and expertly mixed his curveball and sweeper with a fastball that was moving in an extraordinarily efficient debut. He allowed one hit, struck out four and threw 57 strikes among his 82 pitches, a 69.5% rate.

“I was in the strike zone,” said Pivetta, who got seven groundball outs. “I think that’s just what it was. … They were swinging the bat quite often. And luckily, they were just hitting the ground or hitting the air, and I was able to move on to the next guy.”

The 32-year-old right-hander retired the Braves’ first six batters before an Orlando Arcia single leading off the third inning. Two pitches later, the inning was over, on a fielder’s choice grounder and double play grounder.

Pivetta then set down the next 12 batters to finish his day and leave his team a two-run advantage.

The Padres added a run in the bottom of the seventh and two in the eighth, and Jason Adam and Jeremiah Estrada finished off the game to run the bullpen’s scoreless streak to 15 innings.

“Bullpen has done a great job all four games,” Shildt said. “For the first two games, man, they really picked us up and were able to get big innings. And (they got) outs at the end of games the last two nights.”

The 18 pitches Pivetta threw in the fifth were his most in any inning. He got through the second inning in 10 pitches, the third in six pitches and the seventh in eight pitches.

By then, the Braves had gone 20 innings without a run.

It would be 22 innings by the end of the game, and they would be 0-4. That is not the start any team desires. But the last time they lost four to start a season was 2021, the year of their most recent World Series title.

The only other time the Padres were 4-0 was 1984, which ended with the first of their two World Series appearances.

Braves starter AJ Smith-Shawver had trouble with his command, walking three and yielding a half-dozen hits. But he minimized the damage by escaping at least some semblance of trouble in each of his four innings. In all, he stranded five runners in scoring position.

The Padres took a 1-0 lead in the first inning when the good fortune they enjoyed time and again this series with bounces that went their way continued. Tatis led off the bottom of the first with a check-swing double grounded down the right field line, and Manny Machado sent a double to the base of the wall in right field to drive him home.

Machado was left standing on third base that inning, and the Padres left the bases loaded in the second after getting them that way with two outs.

Xander Bogaerts followed a two-out walk by Jake Cronenworth with a double to put the Padres up 2-0 in the third inning.

Smith-Shawver was replaced by left-hander José Suarez, who worked a 1-2-3 fifth and worked around a one-out walk in the fifth before giving up a run in the seventh on Tatis’ lead-off walk and a two-out double by Jackson Merrill.

Closer Robert Suarez was able to sit down as the Padres added on in the eighth against Hector Neris when Bogaerts walked, stole second and scored on Brandon Lockridge’s double and Lockridge stole third and scored on Tatis’ single.

The Braves moved on to Los Angeles, where they will play the Dodgers, one of the three other teams that remain undefeated. The Padres will host the Guardians the next three days and then play 155 more games before October.

“It was a good start,” Bogaerts said.

For now, that is all it was.

“We can play very good baseball,” Tatis said of what he first series showed. “Whatever the game is asking, we can do it. And we’re going to keep it that way.”

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Originally Published: March 30, 2025 at 6:33 PM PDT