And to think Weaver struggled so badly with the Angels this year, going 3-10, that he was traded to make room in their rotation for his younger brother, Jered. But he earned this start by going 4-1 with a 4.03 ERA in eight road starts with St. Louis.

Relievers Randy Flores, Josh Kinney, Tyler Johnson and Wainwright pitched four innings of two-hit ball. Wainwright got the last four outs for the save.

Padres rookie Josh Barfield doubled off Wainwright with two outs in the eighth before Adrian Gonzalez grounded to second.

So why have San Diego’s bats gone AWOL?

“It’s one of those things where we struggle at home offensively,” Brian Giles said. “There’s no sugarcoating it. I wish we had an explanation. We don’t.”

About the only thing the Padres have going now is that they were 45-36 on the road, including winning two of three at St. Louis last week.

“We battled our tails off through September to get here,” said Geoff Blum, who’s filled in for injured shortstop Khalil Greene. “Hopefully, there are some remnants of that floating around and we’ll return to some of the magic in St. Louis.”

San Diego hadn’t lost consecutive games in almost a month.

Wells lost his third straight postseason start, allowing two runs and seven hits in five innings. He struck out two and walked none. Overall, the hefty lefty is 10-5 in the postseason.

The Padres obtained Wells from the Boston Red Sox on Aug. 31, mostly because of his history of postseason success, which included World Series championships with Toronto in 1992 and the Yankees in 1998, when he beat San Diego in Game 1.

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Preston Wilson hit Wells’ first pitch of the fourth inning over Roberts’ head in left for a double. The Padres chose to pitch to Pujols, who lined a fastball into left to score Wilson. The Padres caught Pujols in a rundown, but Blum didn’t get over to the bag from shortstop in time and the slugger slid into second.

Pujols took third on Juan Encarnacion’s grounder for the second out and scored on Edmonds’ hit deep to the hole at second. Todd Walker smothered the ball but had no play. Roberts ended the inning with a nice diving catch of Ronnie Belliard’s fly ball.

San Diego has now lost nine straight postseason games dating to its World Series sweep at the hands of the New York Yankees in 1998.

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Overall, the Padres haven’t led in a postseason game since being up 3-2 against the Yankees after seven innings of Game 3 of the ’98 Series. Scott Brosius stunned the Padres with a three-run homer off Trevor Hoffman in the eighth inning — his second shot of the night — and the Yankees won 5-4.

Notes: St. Louis hadn’t blanked a playoff opponent since finishing the 1987 NL championship series with shutout wins against San Francisco in Games 6 and 7. ... St. Louis’ rookie-dominated bullpen has thrown 6 2-3 scoreless innings of two-hit ball, with 10 strikeouts and one walk. ... Hoffman, baseball’s all-time saves leader, caught the ceremonial first pitch from the man he passed in the record book, Lee Smith. The two also exchanged autographed baseballs.

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