Padres Daily: Looking to make, repeat history; same old; sac story

Good morning from Chicago,

The Padres did yesterday what they too often do in losing 3-1 to the Cubs in Game 1 of their Wild Card Series.

So now they must do something that has been done just twice in major league history.

For some context, it has only been attempted 20 times. And the Padres are one of the two teams to have done it.

Since the best-of-three series replaced the Wild Card game in 2022, no team has lost Game 1 and come back to win the series.

But in 2020, when MLB expanded the playoff pool following the shortened regular season, the Padres and A’s did win their Wild Card Series after losing the opener.

The Padres dropped Game 1 of that series 7-4 before winning 11-9 in Game 2 and 4-0 in Game 3 against a Cardinals team managed by Mike Shildt.

“Go out there  and do it again, like we did that year,” said Fernando Tatis Jr., who hit two home runs in the second game of that 2020 series. “We have a lot of confidence in the room, and we have a lot of experience.”

Seen it before

Yesterday’s game got away from the Padres in a way that looked familiar in myriad ways.

The Padres in 2025 lived and died by the vagaries of close games.

To win, they most often have had to put together quality at-bat after quality at-bat, move runners over and capitalize with timely hits. When they did not do that enough, they generally lost.

And while their pitchers did not give up an inordinate amount of home runs, the fact that the Padres do not hit very many homers often made the ones their pitchers did allow costly.

You can read about how both happened in my game story (here).

As a recap: The Padres went 2-for-7 with runners in scoring position, including 0-for-3 when they had a runner on third base with less than two outs. That made the two solo homers the Cubs hit off Nick Pivetta enough, even though they added on in the eighth inning.

The familiar futility also harkens back to last October, which you might remember crashed and burned in a heap of 24 scoreless innings against the Dodgers in the National League Division Series.

The Padres now have 15 hits and one run in their past 33 postseason innings dating back to Game 2 of that NLDS.

It was shocking last year when they went two-plus games without scoring at the end. They had not done that once during the regular season and had a far more prolific offense.

Tuesday was not a shock. It was a manifestation of the worry going in that the Padres offense would shrink.

This was the type of game they played in 2025.

Their five victories in games in which they scored a single run were most in the major leagues since 2014. (That still made for a 5-24 record in games in which they scored one run.) The 80 games in which they allowed no more than three runs were sixth most in MLB, and they won 66 of those. Their 81 games decided by one or two runs were tied for fifth most, and their 46-35 record in those games was sixth best.

They are used to this.

“I think overall, we played a good game,” Manny Machado said. “And other than those two home runs, we would have probably still have been playing.”

They aren’t expecting to reinvent their offense now.

“Go out there and play,” Machado said. “Go try to play our best baseball. We’ve been doing it all year. Continue to do that. Nothing has changed. Obviously, we’re one down, where we don’t want to be, but wash this up and get ready for tomorrow and go out there and try to do the same thing and come out with a victory.”

Left to wonder

The Padres might not reinvent their offense, but it could have a different look.

Right-handed reliever Andrew Kittredge, who worked a 1-2-3 eighth inning yesterday, will start for the Cubs today before lefty Shota Imanaga takes over.

Imanaga had a 2.40 ERA through his first 13 starts this season and a 5.17 ERA over his final 12 starts. Of the 40 runs he surrendered over 69⅔ innings in that span, 14 were scored in the first inning.

Perhaps Shildt will move a second left-handed batter into the top three spots in the order. To do so would likely mean he went left-right-left with Luis Arraez in the lead-off spot, Tatis second and Jackson Merrill third.

That would also involve a swap of Machado and Merrill.

One deterrent to such a shuffle is that Kittredge has fared better against left-handed batters than right-handed batters.

Regardless of whether he alters the top of his order, perhaps Shildt will move up left-handed-hitting Ryan O’Hearn to fifth and drop Xander Bogaerts to sixth to break up the run of three consecutive left-handed batters the Padres have in the 6-7-8 spots with Ramón Laureano out due to a fractured finger.

That trio of O’Hearn, Gavin Sheets and Jake Cronenworth is who left-handed reliever Drew Pomeranz blew threw in 11 pitches in yesterday’s seventh inning. And those are the batters left-handed starter Matthew Boyd was able to escape against after Bogaerts reached third base with no outs in the second inning and Machado reached third base with one out in the fourth.

With Imanaga, Pomeranz and two other left-handers in the Cubs bullpen, it seems highly unlikely O’Hearn, Sheets or Cronenworth will see a right-handed pitcher today.

But the reality is that putting a right-handed hitter in the middle of those left-handed hitters is not going to keep them from seeing a lefty.

And it’s not like Shildt didn’t know what Cubs manager Craig Counsell was going to do yesterday. This is the hand the Padres were dealt when Laureano got hurt.

O’Hearn, who hit lefties about as well as he did righties this season, came close to two hits yesterday and just got under a fly ball in the seventh. Sheets sent a ball to the warning track at 96 mph against Pomeranz.

“Obviously, we left some guys on third that we’d like to get back and have another opportunity at it,” Sheets said. “… I’ve got to do a better job getting that guy in on my first at-bat. But I thought the at-bats overall were pretty good against lefties.”

The Padres could also move O’Hearn up to second, start switch-hitting Bryce Johnson in left field and have Sheets serve as designated hitter. But that takes Arraez out of the lineup. And since Shildt did not do that when Arraez was slumping, there is no reason to think he will sit the three-time batting champion now when he finished the season on a 15-game hitting streak in which he batted .383 (23-for-60).

So the guys who are in there probably need to simply be better.

“We take a lot of pride in what we do, and I feel like our at-bats are really good,” Cronenworth said. “We’ve got to be better and come back tomorrow, because tomorrow is it.”

Price of sacrifice

Anyone who has watched the Padres play a lot this year could not have been all that surprised when Merrill stepped into the batter’s box with Machado on first base with no outs in the fourth inning and laid down a sacrifice bunt.

And anyone who has listened to Shildt talk about his philosophy on the bunt and giving his players freedom to read the game knew it was Merrill’s decision.

“Yeah, just get a guy over,” Merrill said. “It’s playoff baseball. You gotta score a run any way we can. Bogey barreled one in his first at-bat, so I was giving him an opportunity to just get a knock right there.”

With Machado on second, Bogaerts did follow up his second-inning double with a single. But this base hit was a dribbler to the left side that only moved Machado up 90 feet.

“It worked out to the point where he got Manny over and the infield hit,” Shildt said. “We got a chance to extend the lead. That’s what we’re looking to do, and we got our sac fly with two outs.”

He referred to Sheets’ fly ball that ended the inning after O’Hearn’s flare was chased down with an over-the-shoulder catch by Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson on a ball that had an 84% hit probability.

Dansby Swanson saves a run! #Postseason pic.twitter.com/YsGOZtXyYM

— MLB (@MLB) September 30, 2025

Merrill had just one of the Padres’ 48 sacrifice bunts, which were 11 more than any other team and more than any team had successfully executed since 2021.

The left-handed-hitting Merrill, who hit .309 with seven home runs and seven doubles over his final 20 games in the regular season, had doubled off Boyd in the first inning.

But that was on a ball Merrill caught near the handle and lofted down the right field line at 71 mph.

“It was a bloop double,” Merrill said. “… I’m just trying to play baseball and just advance runners and get a (runner) in scoring position. Play the game slowly, take it slowly. Sometimes it just comes. It’s a tough lefty too. I’ve been hitting really good and I feel really good, but it’s tough out there.”

Shadowy events

The shadow from the grandstand behind home plate had just extended out beyond home plate when Seiya Suzuki and Carson Kelly hit their back-to-back home runs leading off the bottom of the fifth inning.

Pivetta struck out the next three batters, and the first two Padres batters in the sixth inning struck out. The Padres did not reach base again.

“It was bad,” Bogaerts said. “… And you got guys throwing 100. They were taking some funny swings too. It’s hard, the longer the game goes on.”

Most of the Padres acknowledged that the shadows played a factor, as they often do. Hitting a ball thrown by a major league pitcher is difficult enough without it traveling through the light and then the dark.

“It can be tough to see late in the game,” O’Hearn said. “But both sides are dealing with it, so you’ve got to find a way to make it happen.”

The Cubs did it.

They played the Padres’ type of ball in cobbling together their insurance run in the eighth inning on a single, sacrifice bunt, wild pitch and sacrifice fly.

Today’s game (and tomorrow’s if it is necessary) begins at the same time. So there will be no escaping the shadows.

Pivetta, sans Díaz

Jeff Sanders wrote in his postgame notebook (here) about the two Pivetta fastballs that got hit over the left field wall in the fifth inning.

He also wrote about the decision that was made to keep Elias Díaz , who caught all 31 of Pivetta’s starts this season, off the roster for this series after it was determined the oblique strain he suffered in the season’s second-to-last game would not allow him to be as effective as necessary.

That prompted the Padres to carry three catchers (one more than usual) and 12 pitchers (one less than is allowed).

A team is not going to use 13 pitchers in a best-of-three series. Since 2022, just five of the 12 teams to have participated in a Wild Card Series have used more than nine pitchers and just one has used as many as 11.

So Yuki Matsui was sidelined, as the the Padres activated catchers Luis Campusano and Martín  Maldonado.

The reality is the Padres do not want Campusano catching or Maldonado hitting. So with both, they gave themselves an option if they were compelled to pinch-hit for Fermin, which Shildt did nine times in Fermin’s 38 starts.

Maldonado, who started 59 games for the Padres before being designated for assignment on July 31 when Fermin was acquired at the trade deadline, was working out at home in Puerto Rico when the Padres called.

He  was staying ready for them but also getting ready for the 2026 World Baseball Classic, which he plans to play in.

“Afer that,” he said, “I’m going home.”

That stings

You can read Ryan Finley’s “Scene & Heard” (here) column about the experience some San Diegans had at Wrigley Field, Ryan’s tour of a couple of the historic ballpark’s iconic spots and Eddie Vedder singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh inning stretch.

Vedder, the namesake of the Vedder Cup, being on hand to cheer his beloved Cubs was one of a few trolls of the Padres yesterday.

First, Jake Arrieta, one of the heroes of the Cubs’ 2016 World Series championship team, threw out the first pitch to a rousing ovation. Arrieta was one of the faces of the Padres’ 2021 collapse, as he was signed off the scrap heap in August and allowed 16 runs in 12⅓ innings in the final four starts of his career.

Most painful, perhaps, was the 1-2-3 seventh inning turned in by Pomeranz just before Vedder’s rendition.

Pomeranz signed a four-year, $34 million contract with the Padres before the 2020 season and was excellent when he pitched. But that was just a total of 44⅓ innings in ‘20 and ‘21 before not pitching the next two seasons due to injury.

Tidbits

• Yesterday was just the second time the Padres surrendered back-to-back home runs in a postseason game. The first time had worked out much better. Those were hit in Game 4 of the 1984 NL Championship Series by Jody Davis and Leon Durham. The Padres won that game on Steve Garvey’s walk-off homer and won the series the next day to advance to their first World Series.
• Adrian Morejón made his eighth postseason appearance, tied with Dan Micelli and and Pierce Johnson for third most in Padres history behind Trevor Hoffman (12) and Robert Suarez (10).
• Pivetta’s nine strikeouts were tied for fifth most in a Padres postseason game. He joined Michael King (12 strikeouts in 2024) and Sterling Hitchcock (11 in 1998) as the only pitchers in franchise history to strike out at least nine batters without walking one in a postseason game.
• The Padres’ four hits yesterday were tied for their fifth fewest in 60 all-time postseason games.
• Bogaerts was 2-for-4 yesterday. It was his 11th multi-hit postseason game (his second with the Padres).
• Tatis entered yesterday’s game batting .375 (18-for-48)  with a 1.328 OPS in 13 career postseason games. The OPS was fifth highest in history for a player in his first 13 postseason games. He went 0-for-4 yesterday, just his second postseason game in which he did not reach base. His 1.231 OPS is now ninth highest in history in a player’s first 14 postseason games.
• Sanders also wrote (here) about today’s Padres starter, Dylan Cease, and what he had to say about the opportunity he has in Game 2.

All right, that’s it for me.

Talk to you tomorrow.