Good morning,
Game 1 went like a dream.
Game 2 went pretty much like it was drawn up.
The Padres are headed to the National League Division Series for the third time in five years because they dominated the Cubs over two games at Petco Park.
You can read my game story (here) for the details on how last night’s 4-1 victory went down with an emphasis on the deployment of the pitching staff.
In the two-game sweep, the Padres outscored the Cubs 12-1, outhit them 21 to 8 and held the lead at the end of every inning except last night’s first one.
The Cubs had the potential go-ahead run at the plate in one inning and on base in another last night. That was as close as they got to going ahead the entire series save for the top of the first in Game 1.
Rare is a postseason series so stress free.
Suffice it to say, these two days could not have gone much better for the Padres.
“No, it could not have,” manager Craig Stammen said. “Things went our way. And that’s how baseball goes. When things go your way, you should end up on the good end of things.”
They suffocated what had been the most prolific offense in the major leagues over the past six months. They never let it breathe.
The Padres became the first team to ever hold the MLB leader in runs scored to fewer than two runs in a multi-game postseason series.
Much attention was rightly given to the Padres’ homefield advantage. The crowd both nights at Petco Park was highly engaged and enthusiastic as it continually roared.
But it was every bit as important that the Padres had their No.1 starter to deploy in the series opener — and that he pitched like a true ace.
“It started with Michael King,” pitching coach Ruben Niebla said of the Padres’ Game 1 starter completing seven shutout innings. “He was able to do his thing as the number one, and then we were able to set the rest of the series up right there.”
From the moment King struck out Pete Crow-Armstrong on the first three pitches of the series on Tuesday night, a course was set in which the Padres pretty much had everything fall right while they did almost everything right.
The pitching success mattered because the offense scored early and often.
“Give credit to this pitching staff,” Manny Machado said. “What they did was tremendous. We obviously gave them the lead to feel comfortable and to go out there and do their job. They’re hell of a ballclub over there. We just took care of our side.”
It was the winning recipe the Padres have concocted quite a bit lately but had struggled to get right much of the season.
The difference between the Padres that were 50-53 on July 23 and the team that has gone 43-18 since can be boiled down to the symmetry they have found between the pitching and the offense.
That pertains particularly to the starting pitching and how the offense has fed off it. And vice versa.
The Padres led 2-0 after the first inning in Game 1 and 2-0 after the second inning in Game 2 against the Cubs.
Building an early lead is something they are doing more than twice as often over the past two months as they did in the season’s first four months.
They had a multi-run lead in 12 of their first 103 games and went 9-3 in those games.
The first two games of this series were the 15th and 16th times over their past 61 games that the Padres led by multiple runs after two innings. They are 16-0 in those games.
Not that there is a long list of Padres playoff series wins. Five of the eight have home in the past seven years.
What happened the past two days was inarguably the most dominant postseason series any Padres team has ever put together. (It tops the sweep of the Braves in the 2024 NL Wild Card Series, because those Braves were nowhere near full strength and were fried from having to finish their season the day before Game 1.)
Here are the defining moments from this year’s series win, which illustrate how the Padres offense and pitching is playing off each other.
Game 1:
King gets through a perfect first inning by striking out two of the NL’s hottest hitters in Crow-Armstrong and Alex Bregman and getting a groundout by Michael Busch.
Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado homer in the bottom of the inning.
Crow-Armstrong walks and steals second base with two outs in the third inning before King preserves a 2-0 lead by striking out Bregman.
Tatis draws a one-out walk in the bottom of the third and scores on Machado’s two-out double.
The Padres were up 4-0 in the fifth inning, an advantage that doesn’t feel entirely safe against a team that averaged more than five runs a game during the regular season. With two outs, Cubs manager Craig Counsell brings in left-hander Ryan Rolison to face the left-handed-hitting Jackson Merrill, who extends the lead to 6-0 by grounding a ball up the middle and into right-center field at 107 mph.
Game 2:
With the Padres up 2-0 in the third inning, Nick Pivetta walked a batter and surrendered a single to start the inning. The runners that were on first and second with no outs were there eight pitches later after Pivetta got a strikeout and two pop-ups.
After Pivetta again got in trouble and allowed a run in the fourth inning, Bradgley Rodriguez replaced him with one out and two on. Rodriguez got a three-pitch strike, hit a batter with his next pitch and got an inning-ending fly ball out with his next pitch.
In the next half-inning, Xander Bogaerts hit a one-out double and Gavin Sheets pinch-hit for Austin Hays with two outs and blasted a 101 mph fastball 394 feet to right field to put the Padres up 4-1.
“We’re playing our best baseball right now,” Ty France said. “Swinging the bats, pitching, clicking at the right time.”
The Padres’ reward for taking down the Cubs is getting to the NL Division Series, where they will play the Brewers, who built their major league-best 103-59 record with the league’s second-highest-scoring offense (5.1 runs per game) and second-lowest ERA (3.51).
But what the Padres have done while winning 19 of their past 22 games has them feeling their best is good enough against any other team’s best.
“We can play with anybody, especially the way we’re playing right now,” Niebla said. “It doesn’t matter who the opponent is. It’s just preparing for the opponent because we have the team to be able to do it. We have a complete team right now: offense, defense, bullpen, starting pitching.”
The rest
The other story of this series was also the predominant story of this season.
Just guy after a guy coming through.
In the wild-card series: Six different players drove in runs. Nine players had at least one hit. Seven players scored.
“The second game, the big boys, we didn’t do s—,” Tatis said of the contribution by him and Machado. “… But man, it’s a whole group. It’s an entire group coming together, finding a way to win the ballgame, and that’s what it takes to get this far.”
A night after Joe Musgrove made his return following two years on the shelf, Pivetta turned in a solid playoff start just 3½ weeks after he returned from a stay of nearly five months on the injured list.
And Sheets’ home run came four days after he was activated from an IL stint that had him out almost all of September.
“We’ve got some fighters,” Stammen said. “We’ve got some guys that aren’t willing to give up and go down. No quit. That’s how I describe our team. They just don’t quit. No matter what the opportunity is, they want to help us win, do something special that San Diego has never done. They’re willing to kind of do about anything to get it done.”
For Sheets, that means he worked to get back to help the Padres before what will almost certainly be an offseason surgery to repair the torn plantar plate in his left foot. Time off allowed his foot to feel better and get the discomfort to a tolerable level.
It feels good enough for him to get what he considers his “A” swing off, which was what he said was the requirement for him to return.
He said jogging makes the foot feel better. And that is all he had to do after interrupting a chant of “Holy Sheets” by hitting a ball into the second section of seats beyond the right field wall.
Is there anything in the world cooler than hitting a homer in front of 45,000+ chanting your name? pic.twitter.com/OyHqb8Q0r1
— Ryan Cohen (@RyanCohen24) October 1, 2026
“This is what I was hoping, obviously,” Sheets said. “It was tough going on the IL and not really knowing if I was going to be able to come back by the end of the year. This was just imagining these moments and picturing these moments and seeing how well the guys were playing, and just itching to get back and hoping that if I could get back, that we’d have some moments like this. When you watch the guys and how well they were playing, it made it easy to work your butt off to try to get back for this. It was pretty special to get back.”
Sweet reward
Musgrove watched Sheets and Miguel Andujar leave the Peoria Sports Complex last Thursday headed to Los Angeles where they would celebrate the Padres clinching a playoff berth that night.
Musgrove had a live batting practice to throw the next morning, a step in his attempt to get back for this series. And, he said, it wouldn’t have felt entirely right to celebrate clinching a playoff berth when he didn’t pitch all season.
That live BP and how Musgrove recovered from it was the final push that got Musgrove on the NL Wild Card Series roster.
And he pitched the ninth inning in Game 1, his first appearance in a major league game in two years.
And last night, he joyously took part in the celebration.
“To get on the mound and contribute to a win and really truly enjoy the celebration as someone that had a little bit of a say in it feels really good,” he said.
Didn’t let ‘em
Crow-Armstrong is projected to be voted as the National League MVP after leading the league with 45 home runs, stealing 40 bases and compiling an MLB-best 10.6 WAR.
But he went 0-for-7 with a walk and four strikeouts the past two days.
Bregman, who led the major leagues with a 1.010 OPS in the second half, was 0-for-8 with four strikeouts against the Padres.
“We had a great series against those guys,” Stammen said. “We had some guys who made a lot of really good pitches, frustrated them. Great players. For us to hold them down like that, that’s not something that happens all that often. We should be proud of ourselves. Two of the best hitters in the National League, and we were able to neutralize them in this series.”
New life
The Padres can hope Xander Bogaerts becomes the personification of the mantra that it doesn’t matter what a player did in the regular season once the playoffs begin.
Bogaerts, who was signed to an 11-year, $280 million contract before the 2023 season, is coming off another season in which he has not lived up to the Padres expectations offensively.
But after batting a career-worst .231 with a career-worst .676 OPS this season, Bogaerts came out raking against the Cubs.
He followed up his home run and single on Tuesday with an RBI single, a double and a run scored last night.
“Better late than never,” he said.
Bogaerts, who won two World Series rings with the Red Sox, has often talked about the importance of finishing strong in the regular season. He believes it helps a team hit the ground running in October.
He hit .315 (23-for-73) in September.
“I try to do the same,” he said. “I mean, the environment is different. The expectations are a little bit higher. Just gotta try to focus a little bit more and capitalize on mistakes a little bit more.”
Bogaerts is 8-for-20 over the past two postseasons.
“He’s got a lot of playoff experience,” Stammen said. “One of many on our team, but he has finished the deal before. That experience is invaluable. And in those moments, he’s probably pretty comfortable. And this is why he plays the season. It feels good that Bogey is contributing the way he is. I think this is what we all hoped for when we signed him, and he’s making good on that.”
Appreciative
There are few happier places than inside a clinching celebration.
The feeling of accomplishment and release of pent-up pressure is palpable. And the exuberance of the revelry is, for many, enhanced by imbibing some of the alcohol that is otherwise sprayed and poured all over teammates and coaches.
Few players (if any) have seemed to enjoy the Padres’ pair of celebrations in the past week more than Tatis.
What he said in spring training when reminiscing on his missing last year’s lone celebration while home with covid helps explain why.
“It definitely sucked not not being there with your team and celebrating just a long-ass season, being able to win 90 games,” Tatis said in March. “You go through so much s— on and off the field.”
Good enough
It’s not August anymore.
All the Padres needed from Pivetta last night was what he gave them.
“I think as good as Michael looked, it made Nick not look quite as good today,” Stammen said. “But he did a great job. You know, 3⅓ and one run, that’s what you need in the playoffs. And we can go to our bullpen that was fresh because of Michael. We were able to finish the game that way.”
It won’t always be this way. The Padres would have liked five innings from Pivetta. At least a full four would be big in his next start, which will come in a best-of-five series where relief pitchers will almost certainly have worked more.
But as long as he got them into the fourth last night, they had the arms to cover the rest.
“It was planned,” Niebla said. “Nick Pivetta was going to take us to a certain spot, and then we knew what we had after that. It worked out to perfection almost.”
Coming up
The Padres roundly showed deference to their next opponent, against whom they won their season series 4-2.
But Machado wasn’t ready last night to get too deep into the challenge the Brewers present.
“I’ve had a few beer showers, champagne, a few beers, tequila shots,” Machado said. “I haven’t really thought about that yet. We definitely know they’re a good team, best team in baseball right now. I haven’t really thought that far ahead. I’m enjoying tonight, and when I get on that plane tomorrow to Milwaukee, I’ll start thinking about them and start game-planning against one of the best teams in baseball.”
You can join him and begin your preparation for the series by reading Jeff Sander’s “First Look” at the Brewers (here).
Tidbits
As Sanders wrote about in a story (here) from before yesterday’s game, 20-year-old Ethan Salas became the youngest catcher to play in a postseason game. His sacrifice fly in the second inning, which served as the decisive run, made him the sixth-youngest player to drive in a run in a postseason game. Salas was 20 years, 121 days old as of yesterday. One of the younger players was Machado, had his first playoff RBI on Oct. 5, 2012, which was 91 days after he turned 20.
The crowd of 47,513 announced for last night’s game was the sixth largest to ever watch the Padres at Petco Park. That pushed Tuesday’s gathering of 47,084 down to ninth on the list.
The 100.8 mph four-seamer from Daniel Palencia that Sheets hit a projected 394 feet was the fastest pitch a Padres player has hit for a home run since at least 2008.
Sheets’ blast was the fourth pinch-hit home run in Padres postseason history and the first since Greg Myers hit one in the 1998 NL Championship Series.
The Padres had just two pinch-hit home runs all season, fourth fewest in the major leagues. Those were hit by Austin Hays and Luis Rengifo.
Last night was Adrian Morejón’s 11th postseason appearance, third most in Padres postseason history behind the 12 apiece by Trevor Hoffman and Robert Suarez.
France and Merrill both had two hits in both games against the Cubs. Including the regular season, Merrill has 46 multi-hit games and France 45. That is second on the team to Tatis’ 48.
To the relief of many, at least the first two games of the NLDS will be earlier (5:30 p.m. PT on Saturday and 1 p.m. Sunday) and televised on networks that are more widely available (FS1 and Fox One) than the wild-card series.
All right, that’s it for me. Flight to Milwaukee today.
We will have some more stories on our Padres page today. The next Padres Daily will be in your inbox Sunday morning following Game 1 of the NLDS.
Talk to you tomorrow.