PHOENIX —— Slowly dressing and packing his bag for another long plane flight, Brian Lawrence scoffed at the question that had just reached his ears: Were the Padres overrated in spring training by the slew of baseball observers who pegged them to emerge from the National League West pack this season?

"No, not by any means," the Padres' pitcher said in a solemn postgame clubhouse Sunday. "You can't judge a team by the first three weeks of the season. I feel like we still have a great team. Things just haven't clicked yet."

They certainly haven't, and the Padres need the clicking to commence —— and soon —— before binoculars will be required to catch a glimpse of first place in the division.

On Sunday afternoon, they were swept out of the desert, courtesy of an 8-6 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks at Bank One Ballpark. That left them a season-worst three games under .500 (8-11) and already 5 1/2 games behind the West-leading Los Angeles Dodgers.

A week earlier, the Padres received the broom treatment at Dodger Stadium, but a sweep at the hands of the 2004 division champion is more understandable than one against a team that —— though much improved —— lost an epic total of 111 games last year.

"We were awful this series," Padres manager Bruce Bochy said. "That's not going to work, when you don't throw the ball well or get the hits."

Shackled to the tune of five runs and 14 hits through the first 24 innings of the series, the Padres finally sprung to life with the bats late in Sunday's finale. A five-run awakening in the seventh and eighth innings, however, couldn't overcome the 8-1 deficit that substandard pitching put the Padres into.

Lawrence was the chief culprit, as he continued to yo-yo through the first month of the season. In the shortest start of his four-year career, the right-hander yielded six earned runs and seven hits in only 2 1/3 innings. He hit the showers after former San Diego State basketball player Tony Clark cranked a 427-foot, three-run homer to right-center field.

Lawrence retired one fewer batter than he had on April 13 in Chicago, when he allowed seven runs. In between those starts, however, he shut down the San Francisco Giants over eight innings at Petco Park.

Mystified by his up-and-down pattern, Lawrence (1-3) drew no parallels between Sunday's outing and the equally ugly one against the Cubs.

"In Chicago I had nothing. I had no feel," he said. "Today, I didn't leave the ball over the middle of the plate. I threw some balls where it looked like they knew what was coming, and that's a bad feeling."

After free-falling from a World Series title in 2001 to rock bottom last year, the Diamondbacks were among the busiest teams of the offseason. The boatloads of cash they spent are paying quick dividends. A lineup bolstered by new cleanup hitter Troy Glaus banged out 14 hits Sunday —— including three from the Carlsbad High product for the second game in a row —— and a rotation reinforced by four imports gave the club its third quality start of the series.

Left-hander Shawn Estes (2-1), a free-agent signee from Colorado, allowed three runs in seven innings to help the Diamondbacks win their seventh consecutive home game and improve to 9-4 within the division.

"He's had our number, and he got us today," Bochy said of Estes, who's 8-0 with a 2.44 ERA in his past 13 games against the Padres. "We only hit a couple balls hard off him. He made it look easy."

Said Lawrence: "They have a great team. If they have any kind of weakness, it's in the bullpen."

The Padres exploited that weakness in the eighth inning. After Jesse Garcia reached Estes for a two-run homer in the seventh, the Padres jumped on reliever Brian Bruney. With two outs, Xavier Nady walked, Phil Nevin drove an RBI double to right-center field and Ryan Klesko yanked a two-run shot down the line in right.

Another walk and Brian Giles' pinch single off new pitcher Brandon Lyon brought the winning run to the plate, but Garcia grounded out to first. Lyon then worked around a Dave Roberts single in the ninth to record his eighth save, tied for first in baseball.

"We showed signs of getting it together," Garcia said. "We can take a lot from this. We're going to be all right. It's no time to panic."

Contact staff writer Brian Hiro at b_hiro@hotmail.com.