Mid-September, in the thick of a postseason push, isn’t the time to have a game like this. Especially not twice.

The Padres’ lineup took on a D-backs starter making his Major League debut. The end result? A shutout loss. And it happened two times in a span of 11 days.

On Thursday night, right-hander Drey Jameson tossed seven dominant innings and was instrumental in handing San Diego a 4-0 loss at Chase Field. The Padres finished with only three hits and went 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position, failing to capitalize on the two instances in which they had a man on second.

“When you score no runs, [Jameson] goes in his Major League debut, he gets seven innings, two hits, you don’t score — it looks bad,” manager Bob Melvin said. “But he didn’t pitch bad; that’s nothing against their guy. He pitched well. But we’re lacking a lot right now.”

On Sept. 5, San Diego was blanked in a 5-0 loss to Arizona at Petco Park in which righty Ryne Nelson also went seven sterling innings in his first big league outing. In the nine-game stretch bookended by those shutout losses, the Padres have scored two or fewer runs five times and averaged 2.9 runs per contest.

San Diego (78-66), which has lost seven of its past 11, has only a 1 1/2-game lead in the race for the third and final National League Wild Card berth over Milwaukee (76-67), which was idle.