A lot of things happened when MLB changed the postseason format and added a second Wild Card team in each league back in 2012. One of them was that the emphasis on winning the division increased vastly. Before, each league’s four playoff teams were on equal ground. When the second Wild Card was added, it allowed all of the division champions to take a bit of a breather while the two Wild Cards faced each other. Since 2022, it’s only the top two division champions who get the byes, and while the #3 seed does have to play in the Wild Card Series, at least they’d get that series at home.
The San Diego Padres ended up as one of the three Wild Cards in the National League, but their series against the Chicago Cubs looked like it would be an evenly matched series between two strong teams, but after three games, all we saw was a Padres team who was outmatched and couldn’t get an offense going. Padres lost Game One by a score of 3-1, they blanked the Cubs in Game Two (3-0), but Game Three saw the Padres absolutely dominated except for one meaningless homer in the 9th.
Series over, season over. Padres only put up five runs in a three game playoff series. However, what if I told you that’s not what went wrong? Yes, a lack of offense will do a team in, but honestly, the Padres’ fate was sealed when they failed to capitalize on the Dodgers’ losses during the season. There were times where the Dodgers were in a terrible losing skid, but the Padres would also lose those games as well. You have to pick up those games. Again, winning the division is very important. Had San Diego won the West, they’d be at home in the Wild Card Series against Cincy. Instead, they had to go on the road against a very strong Cubs team.
And in that series, the Padres absolutely fizzled on offense. Five runs total, four combined RBIs from Jackson Merrill and Manny Machado. The only other RBI came from Xander Bogaerts, and that came in Game One–San Diego’s only run. Bogaerts did go 4-for-12 in the series, so that’s pretty good. Merrill went 3-for-9, but as for Machado, his homer was the only hit he had. Fernando Tatis, Jr. was also snake bit; he went 1-for-12 and struck out four times in the series. Jake Cronenworth struck out three times, and failed to get a hit in 11 at bats. My goodness.
So with that, the National League half of the Division Series is complete. The Chicago Cubs will face off against the rival Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Division Series, earning that right after winning a postseason series for the first time since the 2017 NLDS. As for the Padres, they entered the postseason as one of three teams in this year’s 12-team field who were still looking for their first ring. The Padres debuted in 1969 and have only reached the World Series twice: in 1984 and 1998. With this early exit, their 57th season will end with the team being empty-handed, and it can be said that this was the team’s best chance to do something. And with the Padres being San Diego’s only team since 2017, it looks like the city on the border won’t really have much to look forward to. Well, except for Survivor Series coming up in a couple of months.
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