Athletics at San Diego Padres: Final Score & Recap
Line Score
| Team | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ATH | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 10 | 1 |
| SD | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 9 | 0 |
The Story
The Athletics handed the San Diego Padres a 5-2 defeat at Petco Park on May 24, 2026, doing so methodically against a team the DiamondIQ model had installed as 63% pre-game favorites. Oakland scored in four separate innings, putting up single runs in the first, fourth, and ninth while plating two in the second to build a lead San Diego never seriously threatened. The Padres managed nine hits but were unable to string them together with any consistency, and their final win probability registered at zero percent by game's end.
The turning points were spread across several innings and were clearly defined by win-probability impact. In the bottom of the second, Ramón Laureano lined out against Jacob Lopez in a situation that swung win probability 12.5 points in Oakland's favor, effectively snuffing out San Diego's most threatening early opportunity. Two frames earlier in that same inning, a Carlos Cortes caught stealing off Michael King shifted the game 8.4 percentage points toward the Athletics. Ty France provided the Padres' most meaningful moment in the bottom of the seventh, connecting for a home run off Justin Sterner that added 10.9 points of win probability for San Diego, but it proved too little against Oakland's cushion. A Xander Bogaerts forceout in the eighth off Mark Leiter Jr. swung momentum back 7.4 points, and a Ramón Laureano walk in the ninth added a late 7.3-point swing for the Padres that amounted to nothing.
Jacob Lopez was the game's most dominant individual performer, generating 26.2 points of win probability added on the mound. Mark Leiter Jr. contributed another 13.3 points of WPA in relief, and Ron Marinaccio added 6.8. Offensively, Carlos Cortes led all batters with a plus-13.6 WPA and a RE24 of plus-1.7, while Tyler Soderstrom posted plus-7.2 WPA and Henry Bolte contributed plus-6.4 WPA alongside a plus-1.3 RE24. The DiamondIQ model leans toward crediting Oakland's pitching staff as the decisive factor, given the collective 46.3 points of combined WPA generated by Lopez, Leiter, and Marinaccio against a Padres lineup that entered as sizable home favorites.