SAN DIEGO — Cincinnati Reds manager Terry Francona was looking down at his scorecard when the ball left the bat of Fernando Tatis Jr. with two outs in the ninth inning in San Diego on Wednesday, looking at who was coming up next in the Padres lineup and weighing how he wanted to deal with an open base at first, needing just one out to force extra innings for the second game in a row.Reds left fielder JJ Bleday, shaded over toward the left-field line, thought he had a chance to catch the ball that was hit like a rocket toward him, but was surprised when it simply defied gravity.“It just stayed on a line,” Bleday said.Tatis blistered the slider from Reds right-hander Chase Petty, hitting it 106.3 mph off the bat, but with a launch angle of just 18 degrees. The expectation was that, at worst, it was a two-out double with the Padres’ left-handed hitting centerfielder Jackson Merrill coming to the plate and the right-handed hitting third baseman Manny Machado after him.In the blink of an eye, Tatis’ ball cleared the fence in left field, giving the Padres a 5-4 victory, sending the Reds back to Cincinnati with five losses over the six-game road trip.Fernando Tatis rounds the bases after smashing a walk-off home run to give the Padres a 5-4 win over Cincinnati on Wednesday. (Meg McLaughlin / The San Diego Union-Tribune via Getty Images)After finishing April in first place in the National League Central, the Reds went 10-17 in May and are having an even worse June, winning just two of nine games they’ve played this month.“It takes a really long year to have a bad year, and it takes a really long year to have a good year,” said Reds left-handed reliever Caleb Ferguson, who was charged with his first two runs of the season in the eighth inning of the loss. “Everybody’s allowed to have skids in this game and they’re going to happen. We’ve just got to get out of them. The beauty of it is I think we’re really, really close in a lot of these games. We’re two or three pitches here and there from winning all these games.”The Reds led in all six games during the road trip, losing all three games in St. Louis and two of three in San Diego. The team has now lost 16 games this season after holding a lead, 14 of those have come since May 2.The negatives are glaring and the team’s recent activity on the transaction wire points to a search for answers, even if none have been overwhelming successes so far.The easiest finger to point is at the bullpen. When the Reds started the season as the division’s best team, it was because the bullpen was one of the best in baseball. Entering May, Reds relievers had a 3.44 ERA, the fifth-best in the game. Since then, Reds relievers have the worst ERA in baseball (6.60), worse than even the Colorado Rockies (6.57), whose 5.23 bullpen ERA ranks 30th among the 30 teams, just behind the Reds’ 5.13 ERA.On the six-game road trip, Reds relievers allowed 17 earned runs over 22 1/3 innings — six of those coming in the 10 1/3 innings against the Padres.Offensively, the Reds’ 489 runners left on base is the fifth most in baseball and their .218 batting average with runners in scoring position is the worst in the game. Only Toronto (.305) has an on-base percentage with runners in scoring position worse than Cincinnati’s .313.“The results are not what we want; there’s no getting around that,” Francona said. “I’m not going to sit here and say a month ago I loved these guys, and now that we’ve lost some games, I hate them, because that’s not how I feel. We’re going to struggle, we’re going to struggle together, we’re going to figure it out together.”There have been some signs of improvement from Reds relievers, even on Wednesday.Zach Maxwell recorded his first big-league save Tuesday night and was called into Wednesday’s game in the seventh inning to hold a one-run lead, and despite an infield single, he got out of the inning with no damage. More importantly, he didn’t walk anyone.The Reds bullpen didn’t issue a walk in Wednesday’s loss and only surrendered two over 10 1/3 innings in San Diego after giving up 10 walks in 12 innings against the Cardinals.Tony Santillan, who appeared in four of the six games on the trip, didn’t allow a home run or a walk in those four appearances, although he did give up the game-tying hit to Samad Taylor in the eighth inning on Wednesday.“He’s got a big heart, man,” Francona said following Tuesday’s win. “I know the numbers, but he’s very important to what we’re doing.”The Reds’ rotation is likely the easiest way to improve the bullpen, going deeper into games means fewer innings to cover out of the bullpen. Right-hander Brady Singer had arguably his best outing of the year, allowing a pair of runs on six hits in six innings with five strikeouts and just one walk.After a slow start, lefty Andrew Abbott has continued to pitch well, and Chase Burns, who cut his middle finger on an aluminum water bottle cap before his start Tuesday, hasn’t allowed more than two runs in any of his last 10 starts. Right-hander Rhett Lowder is back and Hunter Greene isn’t too far behind. A solidified rotation can ease the overworked bullpen. Closer Emilio Pagán threw his second bullpen off the mound on Thursday and could return soon, with veteran right-hander Pierce Johnson not far behind.And offensively, Elly De La Cruz continues to improve and could return from the injured list sooner rather than later. De La Cruz did fielding drills in San Diego and is expected to get an MRI on his right hamstring on Friday. He is eligible to return from the IL on Thursday.The Reds have certainly dug themselves a hole, especially with a difficult second half of the schedule, but they do have 94 games remaining.“Nobody’s running from it; you can’t run from it,” Ferguson said. “We’re going to look up at this thing, and we’re going to be better off as a team by the time we get to the other side of this. We’re still right there, we’re not out of it. It’s just a matter of keep stacking the good days together and figure out how to win games.”