SAN DIEGO -- There’s no obvious explanation for this Padres’ offense to be struggling against left-handed pitching. If anything, it was built to do the opposite.

It’s a group loaded with fearsome righty hitters -- veterans with track records of pulverizing left-handed pitching. Yet, a quarter of the way through the 2024 season, the San Diego offense has been largely very good. Just not against lefties.

Such was the case again Saturday night in the Padres’ 5-0 loss to the Dodgers at Petco Park -- before a sellout crowd of 46,701 that was the largest in the ballpark’s history. That crowd was treated to an early duel between Padres righty Matt Waldron and Dodgers southpaw James Paxton, before Los Angeles broke the game open against the San Diego bullpen.

The Padres, meanwhile, couldn’t do much against Paxton, continuing an odd trend this season. By wRC+ -- an all-encompassing hitting metric -- San Diego entered play Saturday with the Majors’ sixth-best offense. It ranked third in runs (200), fourth in batting average (.257) and ninth in both on-base percentage (.322) and slugging (.402).

But against lefties? The team’s wRC+ of 91 ranked 21st in the Majors, with a .205/.292/.357 slash line -- and that was before Paxton held the Padres in check on Saturday.

Prior to the game, manager Mike Shildt offered a straightforward hypothesis:

“We haven’t seen a lot of left-handed starters, and people aren’t running out a bunch of left-handed relievers against us,” Shildt said. “So we just haven’t seen as many lefties.”

Indeed, the sample is small. Paxton was the 11th left-handed starter the Padres have faced this season. (Those starters have combined for a 3.06 ERA.)

But the problem runs deeper than that. Those fearsome righty hitters? For the most part, they’ve underperformed. Xander Bogaerts and Ha-Seong Kim are off to dreadful starts offensively. Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr., meanwhile, haven’t approached their All-MLB-level ceilings.

The team’s best hitters have been the switch-hitting Jurickson Profar and the left-handed-hitting Jake Cronenworth. Rookie Jackson Merrill, another lefty, has held his own. Now, the Padres have added Luis Arraez to the mix, one of the toughest lefty at-bats in the game.

Which brings us to the glass-half-full conclusion from all of this: The fact that the Padres have been so much worse against lefties means that their lineup is a whole lot more balanced than anyone thought it would be entering the season.

If the Padres can get those righty hitters back to their usual standards (or somewhere close), this should be a pretty fearsome offense. To that end, Tatis notched a pair of hits Saturday. Kim laced a single off Paxton. Bogaerts launched a flyout to the deepest part of the yard in the fourth, then was robbed of a hit by James Outman in the seventh.

“I have no answer for that,” Bogaerts said of the team’s splits. “We keep hitting bullets right at people. It’d be different if some balls start finding some holes. We’d be talking about some different stuff.”

Asked about the trend again after the game, Shildt echoed the sentiment of his second baseman.

“It’s just really not concerning at all,” he said. “Again, some balls go left or right a couple feet -- Bogey took some great swings tonight. … Tati took some good swings. We hit some balls right at people. I’m not going to [be concerned].

“We’ll face any and all. Lefty, righty -- bring 'em on.”

On top of that, the Padres recently added Donovan Solano, a veteran righty hitter who will serve as a utility bench bat. Solano started on Saturday, as he has against three straight lefty starters. He turned in perhaps the two best at-bats against Paxton -- an 11-pitch battle that ended with a lineout in the second inning, then a double down the left-field line in the fifth.

“Everybody here has given me a good welcome to the club,” Solano said. “I’m excited to help this team out in any situation.”

After his leadoff double in the fifth, Solano represented the tying run. But the game swung when he was stranded there. Waldron had allowed his only two hits of the night to Freddie Freeman -- including a solo homer. He was lifted in the sixth before facing Freeman a third time.

The Dodgers struck. They worked a pair of walks against lefty Adrian Morejon, before Teoscar Hernández’s grand slam off Enyel De Los Santos broke the game open.