"TURNING POINT

In the seventh, Luis Rodriguez's double and Cha Seung Baek's sacrifice ended Pedro Martinez's evening and Brian Giles sent a ball spinning off the bat handle to the left side with such English on it, third baseman David Wright didn't even come close to catching it as it went between his legs. Rodriguez scored to make it 3-2.

KEY FACTOR

Bullpens, again. This time, the Padres got the best of it. Mike Adams retired Carlos Delgado and Carlos Beltran with men on first and second and a one-run Padres lead, and Mets rookie Eddie Kunz gave up Chase Headley's homer in the eighth that made it 4-2.

PLAYERS OF THE GAME

Offense: A tie among the three Padres - Jody Gerut, Brian Giles and Chase Headley - who hit solo homers.

Pitching: Cha Seung Baek threw 65 strikes among his 99 pitches, limiting the Mets to two runs over 6 1/3 innings.

Defense: After making a difficult connection with Adrian Gonzalez on a 3-1 putout in the second, Baek jumped on a nice surprise bunt by Dan Murphy and threw him out in the third.

BEYOND THE BOX SCORE

He's in his 10th season in the National League, the first five of which he spent as a slugger with the Pirates, so it's remarkable that Wednesday night's solo homer was only the second of Brian Giles' career at Shea Stadium. Only his fourth RBI in Queens, too.

"Also surprisingly, Giles said he's never found that Mets fans live down to their reputation for verbal abuse of visiting players, this coming from a guy who plays in right field and well within earshot of the fans in the cheap seats.

"Shea's never been one of the worst," said Giles of the ballpark in its last year. "It's always a great atmosphere here. I know you're always hearing about that New York thing, but I think it's mostly just perception. Or maybe it's just that they're on their own players worse than yours."

Giles sounded almost disappointed.

"It's fun to get ragged on," said Giles. "The biggest compliment you can have is when you've got someone on you and you don't acknowledge them, they're completely hoarse by the eighth or ninth inning because they're so frustrated that you're not paying attention to them.""