Extra special: Padres beat Brewers in 11 innings, secure NL playoff spot

The golden era of Padres baseball minted another moment on Monday night, as the team clinched its fourth postseason berth since 2020.

That this season would culminate in a playoff run had become inevitable, but a sluggish September had delayed the champagne.

The newest moment that secured the new normal for the Padres came in the 11th inning Monday when Freddy Fermin’s walk-off single gave them a 5-4 victory over the Brewers.

If you look up the word ‘dawg,’ you’ll be redirected to this video of Freddy. pic.twitter.com/3i7qERtj7f

— San Diego Padres (@Padres) September 23, 2025

Jose Iglesias began the bottom of the inning by getting down a sacrifice bunt he could not execute in the ninth inning, moving automatic runner Bryce Johnson to third before Fermin lined the first pitch he saw from Grant Anderson into center field.

That brought Johnson home and the Padres streaming en masse from the dugout, where they chased Fermín all the way into left field before sharing hugs and donning their commemorative postseason T-shirts.

“It’s a special moment,” Fermin said. “… I don’t have words for this moment.”

The Padres came back from an early 3-1 deficit with a run in the fifth inning and another in the seventh before coming back again in the 10th.

And then their seventh pitcher of the night, rookie Bradgley Rodriguez, got a double play to end the top of the 11th with the bases loaded, making the moment partially his in which to bask.

“I keep telling myself this all the time, but I was made for this,” Rodriguez said. “I was made for this opportunity. I was made to go out there and pitch, so I thank God that we were able to do it.”

The Padres will likely head to Chicago to play the Cubs in a best-of-three wild-card series that will begin Sept. 30 at Wrigley Field.

That will be determined by a combination of results in San Diego and elsewhere over the regular season’s final six days.

The Padres have work to do in their final five games lining up their starting pitching and, just as crucially, figuring out how to elevate their performance from what it has been for much of the past month.

“It’s been a gritty second half for this group,” Jake Cronenworth said. “Pitching injuries, (Xander Bogaerts) going down. But for the group to come together and have this moment, that’s what it’s all about. To get through that rough stretch and get to here is amazing.”

For a night, it was time to pause and appreciate what has been done by this team and the people who have built it into a winner.

The Padres twisted and turned and sort of stumbled into Monday. But they have won 86 games over the course of six months, and that is more than all but seven teams across Major League Baseball.

“It has not been a straight line,” manager Mike Shildt said. “It has been grindy, but it makes it even more special. Adversity is a true indicator of character and team resilience.”

The franchise has never had a period of success like what is ongoing.

Before this run of four postseason berths in six years, there had been five Padres playoff teams in 51 years.

Over the nine seasons leading up to 2020, the Padres had the second-lowest winning percentage in the major leagues. In their entire existence before their run, they had more seasons with 90 losses (19) than with 80 wins (16). The Padres are one of 10 teams with an overall losing record since 1969, the year of their inception.

Their .539 winning percentage since 2020 is 10th-highest in the major leagues. They are one of eight teams to have made the postseason at least four times in that span.

And now, for just the second time in team history, they will be playing meaningful games for a second straight October.

Not since 2005 and ‘06 had the Padres made consecutive postseason appearances.

“It always feels good, for sure, Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller said Monday night. “But the idea of four in six years, two in a row, getting back to October every year, that’s what it’s all about. I think when Ron Fowler, Peter (Seidler), we talked about getting to this point (it was) to get through the hard times, those rebuilding years, to get to the point where starting in 2020 every year — year in, year out — fans of San Diego have a team that they feel like when the year started could get to this point. You’ve got to get in to give yourself a chance. Hasn’t been an easy year, but I’m really proud of the organization, for sure.”

One of the first goals Seidler stated after taking over for Fowler as team chairman a month after the Padres broke the franchise’s 14-year postseason drought in 2020 was to get back to the playoffs in successive seasons.

It took three tries.

Along the way, the Padres spent hundreds of millions of dollars, made dozens of trades, lost their beloved owner and navigated considerable drama.

The 2021 season ended with a nearly historic collapse, a sub-.500 record and the firing of manager Jayce Tingler, who had been just the third manager to lead a Padres playoff team.

Bob Melvin took the Padres to the playoffs in 2022 and all the way to their first NL Championship Series in 24 years. But the next year, the major leagues’ third-most-expensive roster never jelled and did not look anything like a playoff team until it was too late. A September surge left them two games shy of the postseason, and Melvin departed for San Francisco after two years of largely butting heads with Preller.

That November, Seidler died after a long battle with various illnesses. The club was put in the care of his trust. Seidler’s longtime business partner, Eric Kutsenda, took over as interim chairman. Kutsenda and CEO Erik Greupner were charged by MLB with trimming the franchise’s substantial debt, which exceeded the league’s allowable limit.

With a payroll some $83 million lower than the year before and wearing a heart-shaped patch with “PS” inside it on the breast of their jerseys, the Padres won 93 games in 2024 in Shildt’s first season. They advanced to the NL Division Series and were a game from eliminating the Dodgers before failing to score in the final two games.

In late December, the team announced John Seidler, Peter’s eldest brother, would be the Padres’ control person. Two weeks later, Peter Seidler’s widow filed a lawsuit against two of her late husband’s other brothers. Sheel Seidler claimed Matt and Robert Seidler had defrauded her in their role as trustees, and she sought control of the team. The lawsuit, which remains pending in a Texas court, was practically the only news the team made until February.

Cash flow was a big enough issue that the Padres got creative with multiple deals that deferred payments until after the season.

Preller, as he had done in 2024, made the pieces fit into the payroll puzzle he was instructed to solve.

The signing of starting pitcher Nick Pivetta was the Padres’ biggest offseason move, though the Padres had no idea how big it would be. He was supposed to be a complementary piece to their rotation, but he has enjoyed a career-best season while Dylan Cease struggled and Yu Darvish and Michael King dealt with injuries.

Pivetta started Monday’s game possessing the National League’s sixth-best ERA (2.81) and reached a career high in innings and strikeouts while allowing three runs in 5⅔ innings.

Among the low-cost veteran additions the Padres made was Iglesias, who signed during spring training and served his greatest purpose throughout the season as a steady defensive fill-in. On Monday, his home run leading off the fifth inning got the Padres to 3-2.

Iglesias also scored the tying run in the seventh inning after drawing a one-out walk, which was followed by a walk by Ramón Laureano and a single by Luis Arraez that tied the game.

It was a few innings later that all the ups and downs of the season morphed into one result.

“We’re in the playoffs,” Jackson Merrill said. “That’s all that matters.”

Now it is. But what a ride to get there.

With a 21-0 victory over the Rockies on May 10, the Padres upped their record to an MLB-best 25-13.

A bullpen that has been among the league’s best all season had a lull. The offense stopped consistently stringing together hits.  Quality starts became fewer and farther between.

The Padres were six games under .500 over the next two months.

They began to hit again in July and got hot shortly before Preller again made the trade deadline his playground.

He made five trades that added two starting pitchers, a left fielder, a first baseman/DH, a catcher, a utility infielder and an All-Star closer to pair with the All-Star closer they already had.

The new crew helped continue a hot stretch in which the Padres won 19 of their 26 games from July 26 through Aug. 23.

They clinched a series win over the Dodgers and moved into first place alone that day.

The Dodgers won the next day and the Padres have gone 12-15 since, which includes a 7-3 record against the two worst teams (the Rockies and White Sox) in MLB.

While there was never a real danger of them not making the playoffs, given the big lead they had built by late August, the delay was frustrating for them and those who cheer for them.

“Coulda, would, shoulda,” Manny Machado said Sunday. “We just didn’t. We didn’t play well.”

But now they have done it.

“Hell yeah,” a shirtless Machado screamed last night. “Hell yeah. We’re back in that m—–f—er, baby.”