SAN DIEGO — The Petco Park press box sprang a leak Tuesday night. Water began dripping from a portion of the ceiling, temporarily displacing a handful of media members in the front row. A tiny stream trickled down a glass panel and the wall of the walkway below.

By the next morning, there were still a couple of signs of the unintended seepage. A folding caution sign leaned against the panel. A wet spot remained in the carpet nearby. A few hours later, on the field, the San Diego Padres embarked on a salvage mission.

For the second time in two series finales, they avoided a sweep, this time with a 7-1 win against the San Francisco Giants. A season-opening homestand saw the Padres go 2-4, exposing the holes in the ship steered by rookie manager Craig Stammen.

March is barely over, of course. Some of those holes might turn out to be cracks, nothing that time and a little caulk can’t solve. “It’s one-thirtieth of the season. We’ve got twenty-nine-thirtieths to go. I’m excited for those twenty-nine-thirtieths,” Stammen said late Tuesday after the Padres’ fourth loss. Still, as the team packed for a cross-country flight the next afternoon, it had been an educational week.

On Wednesday, in search of a missing offense, Stammen debuted another lineup. The Padres had yet to score more than three runs in a single contest. They hadn’t begun a season with six such games since 1969, the franchise’s inaugural year. So, Stammen went with a novel look, deploying right-handed hitters Fernando Tatis Jr. and Xander Bogaerts at the top against Giants right-hander Adrian Houser.

It was also a configuration largely devised by someone else — in this case, bench coach and baseball lifer Randy Knorr.

“I said, ‘I’m tired. I’m not working very well on this,’” Stammen recalled. “He goes, ‘Craigger, that’s good, because I had one already written up for you.’ So, we’re riding with Randy right now.”

The strategy did not pay immediate dividends. Batting in the first, Tatis lined out. Bogaerts struck out. But then, Jackson Merrill singled. Manny Machado followed with an infield single as Merrill raced around the bases, alertly scoring all the way from first thanks to a San Francisco fielding error.

That gave Nick Pivetta an early lead amid a rebound performance. On Opening Day, the right-hander failed to harness his adrenaline in his worst outing as a Padre, increasing the pressure on a top-heavy rotation. Six days later, Pivetta was back in command, striking out eight batters over five scoreless innings.

“That’s the Nick we all know,” Stammen said.

Yessir 🙂‍↕️ pic.twitter.com/2JOzVsVdcB

— San Diego Padres (@Padres) April 1, 2026

The Padres, for their part, are still getting to know their new boss. Stammen, 42, is not far removed from his own playing career in San Diego. But the former reliever had never managed or coached at any level before president of baseball operations A.J. Preller persuaded him to interview for the job in October.

Natural skepticism has ensued, and Tuesday brought the most scrutiny yet. With the Padres trailing by a run, Stammen left southpaw reliever Kyle Hart in the game for a third inning. Four right-handed plate appearances later, the Giants were beginning to pull away. Meanwhile, San Diego was headed for another series loss.

Stammen later nodded to the wisdom of hindsight. He also pointed out that an alternate route would not have guaranteed a better result.

Either way, the Padres are a flawed vessel. Starting pitcher Joe Musgrove’s postponed return from Tommy John surgery, combined with brief debuts by Walker Buehler and Germán Márquez, has clouded the outlook for a vulnerable rotation. A deep bullpen is already shouldering a significant workload. (Even if Stammen had pulled Hart earlier, Márquez’s abbreviated start still would have made navigating the rest of the game a challenge.)

An offensive awakening, then, was essential. San Diego faced frontline pitching in its opening series against the Detroit Tigers. The Giants brought more resistance to town, throwing the underrated Landen Roupp and the established Logan Webb in the first two games. Left fielder Ramón Laureano, so far the most consistent threat in the Padres lineup, noted each of those starters wields a nasty repertoire.

He added something else.

“Obviously, we can do better, and we will do better,” Laureano said after Wednesday’s game. “Everybody is just getting acclimated to the season, and that’s totally understandable for 162 games. We’ve got plenty more games, and we’ve got good competition coming up.”

The next opponent, the 1-5 Boston Red Sox, is another example of how it can get late early. Stammen demonstrated urgency Wednesday, summoning star closer Mason Miller with two outs in the top of the eighth. It had been days earlier that the manager opted against using Miller for more than an inning.

Soon, Laureano and the Padres erupted for four runs in the bottom of the eighth, surpassing their total in any of their first five games. With the score lopsided, Stammen chose to keep Miller in for the save in the ninth.

“I think having a day off (Thursday), and then also — you know, we kind of need a win,” Stammen said, explaining the timing of Miller’s entrance.

After the game, Stammen spoke with the confidence that helped him land his role. “I think today was an example of what we could be, the type of team that we expected and have,” he said. He also spoke, at times, in uncertain terms.

Laureano, Stammen acknowledged, could earn his way out of the bottom of the lineup. There will “probably be a lot” more experimentation with that lineup. A reporter asked the rookie manager what he had learned about himself after six games.

“I think the biggest thing is just ‘be yourself,’” Stammen said. “Randy keeps telling me, ‘Don’t do it. Don’t second-guess yourself.’ … I found some things that helped me move on from certain decisions that maybe could have went a different way. You can always play the second-guessing game. You know, I’m second-guessing myself probably more than anybody, but I think that’s healthy and it helps me learn and then helps us make us better as we go.”

Friday in Boston, Stammen could debut another lineup. This was not necessarily a job he pursued, and this was not a roster he constructed, but as he is experiencing in real time, the manager wears the brunt of the result, good or bad.

“I don’t really think he cares what the lineup looks like,” Merrill said, “as long as we come out with a ‘W.’”