Padres Daily: The end hits hard; thinking change; ready for ABS

Good morning from Chicago,

Fernando Tatis Jr., shirtless and expressionless, sat far back inside his locker last night.

Had things gone the way the Padres wanted, that locker and all the rest inside the visiting clubhouse at Wrigley Field would have been shielded by plastic and music would have been blaring and champagne would have been spraying and Tatis would have been dancing.

Instead, all around him, there were red eyes and hugs and handshakes and good byes.

Eventually, Tatis got up and walked out of the room. When he returned and spoke to a half-circle of media members gathered in front of him, he used the words “missed opportunity” five times.

This is how it is when a team loses a postseason series, as the Padres did last night.

You can read in my game story (here) about the missed opportunities in their loss to the Cubs in Game 3 of their Wild Card Series last night.

Here are some bullet points to illustrate:

• Tatis, who had been so productive in past postseasons, went 1-for-12 with a walk in the three games.
• Luis Arraez, who was 2-for-3 in Game 2, went 0-for-4 the other two games.
• Manny Machado, who had one really big hit on Game 2, went 0-for-9 the rest of the time.
• Those three batters, who hit in the first three spots atop the Padres order, went 0-for-11 in a 3-1 loss in Game 1 and 0-for-11 in a 3-1 loss in Game 3.
• Gavin Sheets got one hit in six trips to the plate. Jake Cronenworth got none in 11. The Padres hit .189 as a team.
• Collectively, the Padres were 3-for-26 with runners in scoring position.

This season being over was on the hitters. They will remember it for months.

“I’ll put that blame on me, man,” Machado said. “I should have been better.”

Tatis, too, carried that burden. You can read what he said about his night in Jeff Sanders’ notebook (here).

Padres pitchers were mostly superb. But they were not all they could have been.

• Nick Pivetta was stellar for four innings but had two pitches (in a six-pitch span) hit to the bleachers in his fifth inning of work in Game 1.
• Yu Darvish had the shortest outing of his career in Game 3. You can read (here) about Darvish’s day and his thoughts on his uncertain future in a story Jeff Sanders wrote after the game.
• Jeremiah Estrada did some nice work in the second and third inning last night after relieving Darvish with the bases loaded and nobody out and immediately walking in a run.
• Robert Suarez worked a scoreless seventh inning last night before giving up a home run in the eighth.

That is about it. They allowed six runs in three games. Dylan Cease, Adrian Morejón, Mason Miller and Suarez combined for a shutout in Game 2. Miller set records in that game.

But the postseason is when we nitpick most. After six months of recognizing it is a long season and understanding that tomorrow brings another chance to be better, there is no room for anything but getting the job done in the postseason.

The Cubs, who got excellent pitching and even better defense, got the job done.

The Padres did not.

“This one hurts,” Jackson Merrill said. “I just feel like we put so many good at-bats together. It just didn’t go down the way we wanted it to. Dansby (Swanson, the Cubs shortstop) was all over the place, making plays. We made good at-bats the whole time.”

He wasn’t wrong. The Cubs are arguably the best defensive team in the major leagues. Swanson made two run-saving plays in Game 1 and robbed Luis Arraez of two hits in Game 3. Nico Hoerner took an RBI away from Jose Iglesias in Game 3. Pete Crow-Armstrong covers so much ground so smoothly in center field that you hardly notice how good he is.

Video montage of all 14 defensive gems from Dansby Swanson, Nico Hoerner, and Pete Crow-Armstrong from the Wild Card series.

Dansby alone made more than half of them. pic.twitter.com/7VlqFyykQz

— Brendan Miller (@brendan_cubs) October 3, 2025

The Padres were not the only team to struggle at the plate in the Wild Card round. Three teams had a lower OPS, only one team had more extra-base hits. But no team had a lower on-base percentage or scored fewer runs.

“That’s postseason baseball,” Ryan O’Hearn said. “You’re getting a team’s best arms with very little care for tomorrow. You’re getting the guys that don’t give up hits all season long. Those are the  guys that pitch in the postseason. It’s not an excuse. We’ve got to find a way to score runs.”

The offense should have been better.

“Hit,” Tatis said of what the Padres needed to do better. “Just f—ing hit.”

Changes coming

These endings are always cruel.

“We’re a family,” Merrill said. “It sucks breaking up your family. Some guys aren’t gonna come back, some guys are gonna go. It sucks. We love everybody in here. I don’t care who you are, we’ve got your back. Every team you have is a family. I don’t care how you act,  who you are — if you’re an a–hole, if you’re a nice person — if you’re on my team, you’re my teammate. I care about you more than anything. If you’re on the Padres, you’re part of the family. It sucks. I thought last year hurt. This one hurts.”

Merrill’s voice caught for a second before he paused.

It was already on the minds of several players that there will be changes.

Said Arraez: “I’m not ready for this moment. I’m not ready for this moment. … I know it’s my last year here. I’ll be a free agent. This team is special. This team is special. They gave me a lot of opportunities.”

Michael King said, “ It’s definitely gonna be a lot of conversations with my agent, with my family, and we’ll see what happens. … I’ll probably give myself some time to sit on this loss and then we’ll address it.”

And Dylan Cease:  “All I can say is I really do love it in San Diego.”

We will talk more about that trio of pending free agents (and others) in the coming days and weeks.

Each made their marks on the team over the past two seasons. None are particularly likely to be here in 2026.

“Those are guys that we’ve been with for a long time,” Machado said. “Obviously, it sucks. But hey, I want them to get paid as much as they can, and hopefully it’s with us or with another organization. But ultimately, the bond that we created between us and those guys, I mean, I think that goes more than just playing across the diamond from each other. Those relationships are always through there. It was an honor to put on the same uniform as them. Hopefully they put it on again next year with the Padres. But we wish them nothing but the best. They’re our brothers.”

Grateful for the new look

The Padres were beside themselves last night over a called third strike made by home plate umpire D.J. Reyburn against Xander Bogaerts in the ninth inning.

Here is what it looked like on the ESPN broadcast:

“Good thing ABS is coming next year,” Machado said.

That was Bogaerts’ sentiment as well, which Sanders wrote about in his notebook (here).

A brief shouting match ensued as the umpires walked off the field following the game, which required them to walk down steps on the far end of the visiting dugout. It appeared Reyburn said something as he passed by, though it was not clear who began the exchange.

This video was not available until after media left the clubhouse:

Yo holy shit #Padres reaction after the game to the umpires pic.twitter.com/Mw6475vUd2

— kyler (@padsfanatic) October 3, 2025

The Automatic Ball-Strike Challenge System (ABS) will be in place in 2026, allowing players to ask for a review of ball and strike calls. Each team will begin a game with two available challenges and will only lose them if they are wrong. The challenge can be initiated by the batter, pitcher or catcher.

The .115 left lane

The Padres wanted it to be clear that they weren’t making excuses.

But that was also no reason to pretend it wasn’t a huge loss to not have Ramón Laureano in the lineup.

“Unfortunately, Ramón wasn’t able to stay with us through this ride,” manager Mike Shildt said after the game. “Because him in the 7 hole could have made a big difference. But he wasn’t here.”

Besides missing Laureano’s penchant for extra-base hits, the Padres missed his presence batting from the right side.

Instead, the left-handed-hitting Gavin Sheets batted in Laureano’s customary seventh spot in all three games, between the left-handed hitting O’Hearn and left-handed-hitting Cronenworth.

That trio combined to hit .115 (3-for-26) in the series.

All six of Sheets’ plate appearances came against left-handed pitchers, and he was twice lifted for pinch-hitter Jose Iglesias. All but one of O’Hearn’s and all but one of Cronenworth’s plate appearances were against lefties.

We have talked about what might have been done differently to not give Cubs manager Craig Counsell the easy lane to deploy left-handed relievers.

Counsell was asked about that after last night’s game.

“They have such talented players hitting at the top,” he said. “You can’t always pick where your guys should hit. When you have guys like Tatís and Machado, they’re going to hit at the top of the lineup. They’re so tough to get out. You’ve got to go through the whole lineup. We were fortunate to just piece things together just as they did, the same way they matched up.”

Tidbits

• Bogaerts’ left foot was clearly still hampering him when he ran, as he played the final five games of the regular season and the Wild Card series. He lamented before the game that he had hit two infield singles and said he could use one hit to the outfield so he didn’t have to spring so hard down the line. He ended up getting such a base hit leading off the seventh inning, and then he stole second base. He also fouled a ball off his foot, which he fractured in that same manner on Aug. 27, during Game 3. Bogaerts finished 4-for-12 in the series.
• Freddy Fermin was 2-for-4 and hit his second double of the series last night. He finished 4-for-11 and joined Bogaerts as the only players to have at least one hit in each game. Fermin also threw out two batters trying to steal second base yesterday.
• Merrill doubled and homered last night. All three of his hits in the series were extra-base hits.
• Ryan Finley spoke with Padres fans who made last-minute trek to Wrigley Field, and he wrote about that and some other interesting and amusing observations (here) in his “Scene & Heard” column.
• This was the first time in their run of four postseason appearances in the past six years that the Padres did not win a series. They won the Wild Card Series in 2020, the Wild Card and Division Series in ‘22 and the Wild Card in ‘24.

All right, that’s it for me.

I will have a story up on our Padres page within the next day taking a look back at the season with a focus on the future. There are some significant changes coming, but the team is also set up to look largely the same in 2026.

This will be the last Padres Daily until next season.

But please do follow our coverage throughout the offseason.

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