SAN DIEGO — Taijuan Walker seemed like he was headed for a quality start on Sunday until he walked onto the mound in the seventh inning. Walker’s pitch count was low — just 73 pitches — and he didn’t have any sort of pitch limit entering his first outing of the season.

There were times last year when manager Rob Thomson would pull Walker in the fifth or sixth, even when his pitch count was low, but on Sunday, he decided to let him have the seventh. It did not go well. Walker got one out on a fly ball and then walked Ha-Seong Kim and yielded a single to Graham Pauley.

Pauley’s single hit first baseman Bryce Harper’s mitt and then Kim’s foot, so both Kim and Pauley reached base safely. With one out, pinch-hitter Luis Campusano stepped up to the plate and hit a three-run home run to cut the Padres’ deficit from four runs to one. Walker finished his day after 6⅓ innings, allowing six earned runs on eight hits with two walks, four strikeouts, and two home runs, in an 8-6 Phillies win over the Padres.

It was a spectacularly bad way for his outing to end, but there were some positive takeaways. Walker’s velocity fluctuated wildly at times last season, but on Sunday, he hit 92 mph in the first inning and continued to hit it throughout the game. He averaged 91.6 mph on his sinker and 91.1 mph on his four-seam fastball.

Walker was efficient with his pitches, which was why he was in a position to pitch the seventh in the first place. He also made a savvy defensive play in the second inning to start a double play. But that seventh inning put a damper on everything he’d done in the first six.

Despite that, Walker was still in line for the win. When he exited, the Phillies still had a 7-6 lead, and Johan Rojas added on in the eighth inning with a hard-hit, ground-rule RBI double to right field. It was a good all-around day for the center fielder, who made a jumping catch at the wall in the sixth inning to rob Fernando Tatis Jr.

It was also a good day for Kyle Schwarber, Alec Bohm, J.T. Realmuto, and Bryson Stott, who all had multi-hit games. Realmuto hit a two-run home run in the sixth and Stott hit a pair of two-run homers, in the second and the fourth. It was the first multi-home run game of Stott’s big league career.

Nick Castellanos didn’t record a hit, but he reached base in all of his at-bats. He took three walks and grounded into a force out in the eighth inning. It was his first three-walk game since July 1, 2021.

Bohm continued his stretch of dominance, going 3-for-5 with a strikeout. Two of his three hits were doubles; the Phillies third baseman has 17 hits in the first seven games of this road trip. He committed an error in the eighth inning, but it didn’t prove to be costly.

Jeff Hoffman entered in relief of Walker in the seventh inning, allowing one hit in two-thirds of an inning. Yunior Marte pitched a clean inning in the eighth, and José Alvarado got the save in the ninth, pitching a 1-2-3 inning with two strikeouts.

The Phillies (19-10) left San Diego on Sunday night with a three-game sweep. They conclude the road trip with three games against the Los Angeles Angels starting Monday night.

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