(Photo credit: Geoff Burke-Imagn Images)

The San Diego Padres will be looking to generate more offense and play better defense as they continue their push toward the postseason.

They lost two of three games in Miami this week before coming to St. Louis for a four-game series against the Cardinals that starts Thursday night.

San Diego scored just seven runs in the series against the Marlins while remaining in the National League's third wild-card slot.

'We're playing a lot of games where we don't have a lot of margin for error,' Padres manager Mike Shildt said after his team took a 3-2 loss to the Marlins on Wednesday. 'We play a lot of clean games, and (Wednesday), we gave away a little too much that cost us.'

The Padres sit 25th in the majors in runs scored. As such, president of baseball operations A.J. Preller has expressed an interest in acquiring more offense before the trade deadline.

'We've got to put ourselves in good position regardless of what happens at the deadline,' San Diego third baseman Manny Machado said. 'We want to make a postseason run. We want to get deep into the postseason. That fact doesn't change whether we do anything or we don't. We've just got to go out there and play better baseball than we did these last few days.'

Machado committed a throwing error in each of the two losses at Miami.

'It came down to some stupid errors I made that allowed some dumb runs,' he said. 'Would've been a different story if I played a little better defense. When you're playing games like this, I think it comes down to defense.

'That's why we lost. Those stupid errors.'

The Padres will open the St. Louis series with Yu Darvish on the mound. The right-hander has struggled to an 0-2 record and 6.08 ERA in his three starts since returning to the rotation following an elbow injury that sidelined him for the first half of the season.

Darvish has made nine lifetime starts vs. St. Louis, going 2-4 with a 3.20 ERA.

San Diego will catch the Cardinals reeling from a 1-5 start after the All-Star break. St. Louis got swept at Arizona, then lost two of three games at Colorado.

During the five defeats, the Cardinals were outscored 36-11. St. Louis manager Oliver Marmol was most disappointed with his hitters after his team lost to the Rockies 6-0 on Wednesday afternoon -- Colorado's first shutout win since May 15, 2024.

'Our approaches weren't very good,' Marmol said. 'In my opinion, that's the worst game we've played.'

The Cardinals' offense has sagged when the team has fallen behind early in games over the past week.

'That's part of it,' Marmol said. 'We've done it a decent amount after the break. It does take it out of you. You have to be able to separate it. That's part of being mentally tough. You've got to separate what's going on on that side of the ball and still take productive at-bats and keep your approach.'

The Cardinals will open the series with Sonny Gray (9-4, 4.04 ERA), who is coming off an ugly 10-1 loss to the Diamondbacks on Saturday. He allowed nine runs (eight earned) on 11 hits in 3 1/3 innings in that contest.

Gray is 3-0 with a 1.58 ERA in three career starts against the Padres.

--Field Level Media