Allow me to show you what catharsis looks like: After 210 at-bats and almost as many questions about why he hadn’t hit a home run, Fernando Tatis Jr. finally launched his first HR of the season on Saturday afternoon at Nationals Park in Washington, and it was not a wall-scraper. The blast f lew 451 feet into the left field seats (and, luckily enough, the arms of a Padres fan). The entire Padres dugout, happy to see their teammate finally perform his trademark stutter step around 3rd base, celebrated with him. It would be great if that was the highlight of a winning story but alas, the long-awaited round-tripper came in a 9-4 loss to the Nationals that featured another first: the first ejection of Craig Stammen’s managerial (or playing) career. The Padres built a 3-1 lead on the back of solo homers from Tatis Jr., Xander Bogaerts, and Manny Machado. The way Michael King was going it looked like that would be plenty. King cruised through 6.0 innings on 64 pitches while allowing just one run. Then something went a little sideways. Before the bottom of the 7th inning King noticed something off about the mound and asked for some help from the grounds crew to fix it up. It took a couple of minutes to fill in a hole that had developed on the landing spot and King said he was happy with it. But, from that moment on he struggeld. CJ Abrams singled and Jose Tena hit a grounder towards right field. Tatis Jr. smothered it with a dive but threw wide to 2nd base, putting two runners on with nobody out. King walked Jorbit Vivas on five pitches to load the bases and hit Dylan Crews with the first pitch to bring in a free run. That prompted Stammen to bring in Bradgley Rodriguez with nobody out and the bases still loaded. He got Drew Millas to hit a grounder to Tatis Jr., who threw to Bogaerts to try and start a double play. Crews made an aggressive, clean slide to prevent a throw to 1st base, and 2nd base umpire Dan Bellino said Bogaerts never touched the base so he called Crews safe. The Padres challenge was upheld by replay so Stammen, knowing an argument after a replay is grounds for ejection, went out to talk about it anyways and was shortly run from the contest. After that everything unraveled. Another bases loaded walk, a single, and an RBI groundout pumped the lead up to 7-3 and it was all but over. The Padres will try to win the series on Sunday with Griffin Canning on the mound against Zack Littell. This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. ...read more read less