After stumbling through season’s final month, Padres get to the part that matters

All right.

The regular season is over.

And no one has any idea what to make of it.

The Padres routed the Diamondbacks 12-4 on Sunday in a game that was meaningless except for that it got the Padres to 90 wins for the second straight season for the first time in franchise history.

That should be stressed at the outset when talking about what a mucky month-plus the Padres plodded through before closing with seven victories in their final eight games.

It should also be noted they are not the only ones to have basically descended into the postseason.

The Dodgers were 32-37 from July 4 through Tuesday. The Cubs went 13-15 from Aug. 26 through Thursday. The Reds won enough over the final two weeks that a loss on Sunday did not matter, but they went 8-16 from Aug. 20 to Sept. 16. The Tigers were 7-20 from Aug. 24 to Sept. 24, losing their division lead before clinching a wild-card spot the day before the season ended. The Blue Jays went 1-6 before closing with four straight victories to win the American League East.

All that at least provides some perspective when considering the Padres lost 15 of their 24 games from Aug. 24 through Sept. 19 and often looked bad doing it.

And what of the rest of the season?

The Padres had the major leagues’ best record (25-13) through 38 games, went 30-36 over the next 2½ months and put together MLB’s second-best record (19-7) from July 26 through Aug. 23 before slipping into their late slide.

“It has been a grind,” Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller said Monday night after the Padres clinched their fourth playoff berth in six seasons. “They kind of grinded their way through all year. The best ball we played was at the start of the season. Hopefully, we’re playing our best ball at the start of the year and end of the year.”

The Padres departed San Diego on Sunday. They’ll open a best-of-three wild-card series against the Cubs on Tuesday at Wrigley Field.

The Padres’ starting pitching is not nearly as strong as it was going into the 2022 and ‘24 postseasons, though that is not seen internally as being as big a question as an offense that was rarely better than just enough all season.

It is probably a safe assumption that a lot rides on the performance of Game 1 starter Nick Pivetta, the Padres’ only consistently excellent starting pitcher in 2025.

A lot rides on Game 1, for sure. Not since MLB went to a wild-card game to a wild-card-series format in 2022 has a team lost Game 1 and won the series. Ten of the 12 wild-card series played in that span have been sweeps.

But then, a lot rides on virtually every pitch by every pitcher and every swing by every batter in the postseason.

And that it matters is perhaps the Padres’ greatest hope.

Several people in the organization assessed during the Padres’ recent struggles that the root of their problem was that a good number of players took for granted that they were going to make the postseason, which turned the final push into a wrestling match with themselves.

They got back to looking like the team they believe themselves to be as the postseason neared. And Manny Machado said after going 2-for-2 with a home run on Sunday: “Just finish off strong. Finish off how we started the season and get ready for the postseason, which is the ultimate goal.”

There is no sport in which the difference between the regular season and the postseason is so pronounced. It is as if one day a team is riding an inflatable on a lazy river and two days later it is fighting to stay upright on Category VI rapids.

A lazy six-month journey gives way to one frantic dash across the street after another.

A game almost every day for six months means a lot of do-overs. One of baseball’s most oft-uttered cliches following a loss in the regular season has to do with getting another chance tomorrow. The tomorrows are not as plentiful in the postseason.

Two or three or four losses in a short span mean nothing in June or July or usually even September. Such skids end Octobers.

“Playoff baseball is definitely different,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said this weekend. “Looking forward to that adrenaline.”

It was Tatis, almost always the focal point, who perhaps personified the Padres’ crawl to the playoffs.

One afternoon a couple weeks ago, as he sat slumped in a chair in the visiting clubhouse at Citi Field. It was pointed out to a weary Tatis that a long season had dwindled to just a short window in which the Padres could get their act together.

“Yeah, it’s a short time,” he interjected. “Unless you’ve just played for six months in a season. Then it’s a long time.”

Tatis was not struggling on the field nearly as much as the other face of the franchise.

“I’ve sucked,” Machado would say a couple of days later, assessing that his performance at the plate was the biggest reason the Padres had been unable to pull out of a monthlong slog.

That undoubtedly was among the biggest factors — along with starting pitchers that were frequently putting the team in early holes, other players slumping to different degrees and occasional sloppiness on the basepaths.

But the vigor-less vibe being put out by Tatis was emblematic of what several people inside and outside the organization had come to accept as the biggest reason the Padres skated to a playoff berth that was all but assured by late August.

They were, in essence, on cruise control.

That was by no means a specific assessment of just Tatis and/or Machado. Nor should such an assessment be taken as the entire explanation.

But it became pretty well accepted that the Padres’ seemingly certain postseason berth played a major role in the club playing inconsistent and uninspired baseball in late August and the majority of September.

And fair or not, entirely accurate or not, Tatis is the thermometer by which the Padres’ temperature is taken. And Machado is their de facto captain.

For weeks, almost every word out of Tatis’ mouth had sounded as if it took great effort to utter. A number of his at-bats were quick. Scouts following the team opined that he often looked lethargic in the field and disinterested at the plate.

Presented multiple times with the idea that he was worn down, Tatis never downplayed the reality.

Asked that day in New York how he and the Padres would be different in the postseason, he shrugged.

“Intensity,” he said.

That would be a ridiculously lacking explanation if not for the fact it was Tatis saying it.

“Doesn’t matter,” one scout said of how Tatis looked in the middle of September. “When the playoffs start …”

With that, the man slid his palms together and separated them with one hand arching upward to signify a plane taking off.

“He’ll be ready,” said another veteran scout. “Totally different.”

Few players in history have begun their career responding to that playoff adrenaline as prolifically as Tatis. His 1.328 OPS is the fifth-highest ever for a player through his first 13 postseason games.

There is reason for the Padres to believe that Tatis is, indeed, ready to jet when it matters. Toward the end of a season in which he was almost certainly the Padres’ most valuable player largely because of his ability to get on base and make things happen once he was there, Tatis hit seven home runs in a span of 77 at-bats from Sept. 3 through Saturday.

It is not about two players — even two players as talented as Machado and Tatis. The Padres this season have not had a single player carry them for any extended period. And multiple people who have watched the Padres and some inside the organization have proffered it could be Jackson Merrill who shines brightest among the Padres’ stats in October.

But observers do believe it matters how the Padres’ tone-setters perform.

Machado, who hit .171 with a .502 OPS over 33 games from Aug. 6 through Sept. 11, finished stronger as well. He hit .273 with an .811 OPS over his final 11 games and on Sunday hit his fourth home run in that span.

“The season is over now,” Machado said. “Now it’s time to go out there and play some good baseball and leave it on the field. … The postseason is the postseason. It’s the best. This is what we play for every single day. This is why I grinded 162 games to have an opportunity to do something special.”