Padres beat Cubs, even Wild Card Series; decisive game on Thursday

CHICAGO — The Padres on Wednesday earned themselves at least one more game with a chance to earn at least one more series.

Their 3-0 victory over the Cubs, which evened their National League Wild Card Series at a game apiece, was accomplished with the best postseason start of Dylan Cease’s career and the usual contribution from their bullpen and because Manny Machado made a moment.

The teams will play a decisive game at 2:08 p.m. PT Thursday. The winner will advance to play the Brewers in the NL Division Series.

“It’s a do or die, same thing as today,” Machado said. “All hands are on deck, whoever it is. We’ve done it all year. I don’t think it’s going to be anything different. We’ve got to win to advance, so …”

Game 2 was progressing in a forebodingly similar fashion to Game 1, which the Padres lost 3-1, until Machado made it far less worrisome with a two-run homer to the back row of Wrigley Field’s left field bleachers in the fifth inning.

That allowed the Padres to lean on their favored formula for winning.

“Score early,” Machado said. “We had opportunities today. “Capitalizing in that first inning. And we’ve got to tip our cap to Dylan. He went out there and did a tremendous job, got us (into the fourth inning), and … what our bullpen did today was outstanding. We were able to give them the runs early on in the game to be able to do it.”

Cease made it through the longest of his four career postseason starts before giving way to Adrian Morejón with runners on first and second base and two down in the fourth inning.

Morejón got out of that inning and worked through the sixth without allowing a baserunner, throwing a season-high 33 pitches in the process.

Mason Miller struck out all three batters he faced in the seventh, ending the second of those with a 104.5 mph fastball, the fastest pitch in the postseason (dating to at least 2008, when pitches began being tracked by StatCast).

The right-hander also struck out the first two batters he faced in the eighth before hitting Cubs lead-off batter Michael Busch on his back foot with a slider.

Robert Suárez took over and got the final out on a line drive by Nico Hoerner that Fernando Tatis Jr. chased down with a leaping grab on the run in the right field corner.

With thousands of blue towels being spun in circles around him, Suarez worked around a one-out single in the ninth to end the game.

The game had begun with the Padres taking a 1-0 lead for a second straight day, and for the second straight day they couldn’t make anything of additional chances.

Before Machado’s home run, they had gone 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position.

They went 2-for-7 in that circumstance on Tuesday, failing to get runners home from third base with less than two outs in two of the first four innings and then finishing the game on an 0-for-14 run against Cubs relief pitchers.

The Cubs went with one of those relievers, Andrew Kittredge, to start Wednesday’s game before Shota Imanaga took the mound in the second for his first career appearance running in from the bullpen.

The game began with singles by Tatis and Luis Arraez to set the Padres up right away against Kittredge, not only with a scoring opportunity but with a chance to knock Cubs manager Craig Counsell’s plan off track. They achieved one of those ends.

After Machado struck out, Tatis and Arraez executed a double steal, which allowed Jackson Merrill to drive in a run with a fly ball to right field.

The Padres pushed Kittredge to the limit, but Xander Bogaerts’ lineout to left field ended the inning before Counsell was forced to bring in Imanaga.

The left-hander instead got a clean start in the second inning, in which he retired the Padres’ run of three left-handed batters (Ryan O’Hearn, Gavin Sheets and Jake Cronenworth) in order.

The Padres stressed Imanaga in two of his first three innings without adding to their lead.

Freddy Fermín led off the third inning by lining a double to the corner in left field, but the Padres’ No.9 hitter was on third base seven pitches later after Tatis popped out down the right field line, Arraez grounded out and Machado hit a fly ball to right field.

The Padres made Imanaga throw 27 pitches in the fourth inning but failed to get a runner in from second base.

That inning featured some maneuvering by Padres manager Mike Shildt in both the top and bottom halves.

After Merrill led off the fifth with a walk and got to second on O’Hearn’s one-out single, Shildt sent up the right-handed-hitting Jose Iglesias to face Imanaga in place of Sheets. Iglesias flied out to center field before Cronenworth ended the inning with a groundout.

Shildt stuck with Cease to start the fourth, and he got two quick outs — striking out Ian Happ, the Cubs’ No.3 hitter, and Kyle Tucker — before Seiya Suzuki lined a double to the corner in left field. The Padres put Carson Kelly on with an intentional walk before Shildt emerged from the dugout to remove Cease and give the ball to left-hander Adrian Morejón.

“Dylan deserves a lot of credit for getting us to where he got to,” Shildt said. “…  The key for me — there were a couple keys, but the primary one — was to start the fourth. Once you got Happ and Tucker, it’s like, all right, now we have a plan. He can take Suzuki, and of course, he hits a double and we did what we did with Carson. But to get to Morejón in the lane that we liked him in. But (Cease) got us to that point, and he did a fantastic job. He had electric stuff.”

Morejón did his job, getting left-handed-hitting Pete Crow-Armstrong to ground out.

In the fifth, Tatis worked a seven-pitch walk with one out and moved to second base on Arraez’s sacrifice bunt , the decision Counsell made to pitch to Machado with first base open was the kind that could be second-guessed in Chicago for years.

“The results suggest that we should have done something different,” Counsell said. “Really just confidence in Shota, plain and simple there. I thought he was pitching well. I thought he was throwing the ball really well, and unfortunately, he made a mistake.”

Machado sent the first pitch from Imanaga — a splitter that did not split and sailed flatly into the heart of the strike zone at 84 mph — a projected 404 feet.

He backpedalled as he watched the ball fly and was not even five steps out of the batter’s circle when his blast came down just before it would have literally left Wrigley Field and landed on Waveland Avenue. Still watching the ball, he threw his bat backward and then began his jog toward first base, but not before crossing his arms emphatically in front of his body twice while yelling toward the Padres dugout.

“That’s what postseason is about, man,” he said. “It’s a beautiful thing to be playing here in front of these crowds and with what’s at stake.”