SAN DIEGO – In an otherwise anemic and punchless San Diego Padres lineup, Adrian Gonzalez stands alone.

He’s a disciplined, hard-hitting monster, who has put up impressive numbers in home runs and RBI that rank near the top of the National League while playing in a pitcher’s ballpark and surrounded by a lineup with seemingly no other regular who can hit over .260 with any sort of power.

He has no protection and little help. And yet he found a way to beat the Seattle Mariners on Thursday, much to the chagrin of manager Don Wakamatsu, ending the Mariners’ run of seven straight wins against San Diego.

Gonzalez hit the tying home run and later scored the winning run as the Mariners coughed up a chance for a series sweep and lost, 4-3 in 10 innings, Thursday at Petco Park.

“The biggest thing with this game, obviously, was letting Gonzalez beat us twice in one game,” Wakamatsu said. “You go in there with the game plan knowing this guy can do the most damage and he ends up hitting a home run and double off us, when we’re basically trying to pitch around him.”

Gonzalez went 4-for-4 with a home run, two RBI and two runs. The performance upped his season totals to a .282 batting average with 23 homers and 45 RBI.

The Mariners (32-34) had been careful with Gonzalez earlier in the series, walking him twice and holding him to 0-for-6.

But he changed his luck in the first inning, following David Eckstein’s RBI double with an RBI single to right against Mariners starter Brandon Morrow to give San Diego a 2-1 lead.

However, Seattle was able to rally behind the suddenly surprising power of Franklin Gutierrez.

In the fourth inning, the wiry center fielder crushed a home run more than 400 feet to deep right-center to tie the game. He followed that with a solo home run to left in the sixth for the first multi-homer game of his career. In the three-game series, Gutierrez hit three home runs, one to left, one to center and one right, giving him six home runs this season.

“I consider myself a line-drive hitter, but sometimes you put a very good swing on the ball and the ball will carry out,” Gutierrez said.

Wakamatsu commended Gutierrez’s recent swing work in the batting cage, and the power might be a result of that.

“Today it paid off,” Wakamatsu said. “When he stays back, he has the ability to go to all fields. He has great hand speed.”

Gutierrez’s sixth-inning home run gave the Mariners a 3-2 lead, and he tried his best with his glove to keep it there the next inning.

Reliever Chris Jakubauskas fell behind 2-1 to Gonzalez and then left a fastball over the middle of the plate. Gonzalez hammered it deep to center.

“It boils down to I left a pitch over the middle,” Jakubauskas said. “He gets paid a lot to hit those pitches, and he did. It was the wrong time to challenge him.”

Gutierrez, who has made a habit of making highlight-reel catches this season, tracked the ball all the way to wall and made a leap for it. It looked like he would catch it, but the ball bounced off the tip of his glove and over the fence for a home run.

“Anything in the air, even the ball to the gap, if it has air underneath of it, you feel like he’s going to catch it,” Wakamatsu said.

Gutierrez was frustrated that he didn’t come down with the near-impossible catch in his glove.

“I did everything I could,” he said. “I jumped and it went off my glove. I thought I could catch it and save a run.”

Instead, the game was tied, and the Mariners saw their victory hopes slipping.

“If I make a better pitch there, we have a 3-2 lead and get it to (closer David) Aardsma and we win the game,” Jakubauskas said.

With the game tied, neither team produced much of a threat for the next three innings. But when Gonzalez’s turn to bat in the 10th inning came up, San Diego had a chance.

Facing Mariners reliever Miguel Batista, Gonzalez laced a double to the right-center gap that even the fleet Gutierrez couldn’t outrun. The next batter, Kevin Kouzmanoff, single to left to send Gonzalez home with the winner.

“It’s easier said than done sometimes,” Wakamatsu said of trying to work around Gonzalez. “Sometimes when you try to be too careful you make mistakes. It’s not easy.”

Former reliever Morrow pitched four innings in his second start. A 20-plus-pitch first inning doomed Morrow’s limited pitch count.

“The major issue is pitch economy, 20 pitches in an inning doesn’t cut it,” Morrow said. “The end results are OK. But runs matter, and you want to give more innings than that.”

Ryan Divish: 253-597-8483

ryan.divish@thenewstribune.com