Braves Roll Past Padres : Baseball: Atlanta’s Terry Pendleton has six RBIs as the Padres lose their fifth game in a row.

Padre catcher Benito Santiago walked through the stadium tunnel Monday afternoon when he started to pass the Atlanta Braves’ clubhouse. He slowed, stopped, and wondered if should turn left and enter the visiting clubhouse.

Santiago, knowing the Padres and Braves had trade talks several weeks ago that have since ended, smiled weakly. The way Padre fans have been treating him lately, he feels like the enemy, anyway.

He was booed heavily through the night Monday in the Padres’ fifth consecutive defeat, a 10-4 drubbing by the Braves in front of a cynical crowd of 20,002 at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

Although the Padres certainly have problems more grave than Santiago--with Brave third baseman Terry Pendleton driving in more runs (six) Monday than the entire output of the Padres’ No. 5-No. 7 hitters the entire season--he has become the target of the fans’ wrath.

It was Craig Lefferts----not Santiago--who could last only four innings in the Padres’ worst pitching performance of the season. Lefferts allowed six hits, two walks and six runs, although only two were earned. The Padres are seriously debating of returning Lefferts (1-2) 7.15 ERA, to the bullpen and making Jose Melendez, 3-0, 0.82 ERA, a starter.

It was second baseman Tim Teufel--not Santiago--who committed two errors that turned into four runs. He was starting only because Kurt Stillwell has a badly bruised left leg, and will have X-rays today to make sure it’s not more serious.

It’s the entire Padre offense--not just Santiago--who have left 11 baserunners stranded in each of the past three games, batting .115 with runners in scoring position, and only .193 in the same situations for the season.

Santiago is not making excuses for his woeful .135 batting average, which includes two 0-for-14 skids this season, one of which ended in the ninth inning.

It’s just that when the entire team is batting only .236, and have scored eight runs in their last 48 innings, he pleads for fairness.

“The fans can do whatever they want,” Santiago said, “but there’s no way this will keep going on. Come on, you think I’m going to keep batting like this? No way, man.

“Do you know what’s going to happen? I’ll get hot, and my hits will come in bunches.

“One day, they’ll open up the paper, look at how my average has gotten up there, and say, ‘Ah, Santiago, there he is again. He’s back.’ ”

Yet, until then, there apparently will be hostility. It was almost as if the few fans hung around until the bitter end just to boo Sanitago one more time, disappointed that he snapped his 0-for-14 slump.

“I’m not worried,” Santiago said, “I’m really not. I know it will come. It’s just a matter of time.”

The Padres also believe the worst could be behind them, obtaining a season-high 13 hits, and scoring as many runs Monday as they had in the previous 39 innings.

Padre third baseman Gary Sheffield also enabled the Padres to end a horrid streak when he homered in the ninth off Alejandro Pena. It was the Padres’ first homer in 182 at-bats.

Still, it hardly was enough, with the hitting exploits being left to the Braves. Besides Pendleton’s career-high game in which he drove in more runs in five at-bats than he did all season, there was outfielder-defensive back Deion Sanders.

Sanders, who’s an All-Pro NFL defensive back for the Falcons, extended his hitting streak to 14 games in the third inning with a single to center. He has hit in every game this season, and is 11 games shy of Charlie Grimm’s modern-day record of hitting in 25 consecutive at the start of the 1923 season.

“This wasn’t big for me, it was big for the entire ballclub,” said Pendleton, whose team has lost six of the past seven games. “We needed to start doing something. I hope it’s a good omen.

“We can’t wait to the All-Star break until we start winning ballgames.”

The Padres, who have fallen back to .500 after a 7-2 start, showed signs of offensive life for the first time in six games. They shuffled their lineup by trying Kevin Ward instead of Jerald Clark (.167, two RBIs) in left field. But although the bottom of the order produced five hits, they failed to produce in any of the five opportunities with runners in scoring position.

“It’s frustrating,” Clark said. “We’ve got a long ways to go, but we want to do it now. Darrin (Jackson) and I started talking about it on the flight (Sunday), then he said, ‘Do we really need to talk baseball?’ So we quit talking about it for awhile, but it always came back up.”

Said Jackson, who obtained his first two-hit game of the season and raised his batting average to .149: “The big thing is to relax. Look around, Kevin Mitchell is struggling too. Does that mean the former MVP can’t play anymore? Come on.”

The Padres’ offensive output would have been good enough to win each of their three games in Houston, but on this night, they simply couldn’t contain the Braves’ offense. Atlanta actually equaled their season-high with six runs by the fourth inning.

Lefferts was able to sail through a 1-2-3 first inning, but it proved to be an aberration. The Braves teed off on Lefferts the next three innings, and Teufel contributed to his demise by making two errors.

The Padres actually led 3-2 after the second inning on RBIs by Tony Fernandez and Tony Gwynn, but the Braves tied the game in the third on Pendleton’s sacrifice fly. They broke the game open in the fourth with three runs after Teufel’s two-out throwing error.

With two outs and Rafael Belliard on second base, Sanders hit a ground ball that glanced off Teufel’s glove. He may have had time to throw out any other baserunner, but not Sanders, the fastest man in baseball.

Teufel slammed his glove in disgust, and watched in misery as Smith hit a run-scoring single to right, and Pendleton followed with a double down the left-field line for two more runs. Pendleton was thrown out when he found himself caught between second and third, but the damage already was done.

“It’s happened to everybody,” Padre Manager Greg Riddoch said of his team’s losing streak. “Look at the Dodgers. Look at the Braves. Everybody’s bunched together. We’re still in the same boat.

“Thank goodness nobody’s hot and running away with it like the Toronto Blue Jays.”