After a slow and stuttering start to the season, the San Diego Padres tore through September with passion and poise. Every impressive thing they've done during their current 20-3 surge suggested they were determined to reach October as the most dangerous team in baseball.
October is finally here — and so is the best version of the Padres, as they demonstrated in their two-game destruction of the Chicago Cubs in the NL Wild Card Series.
The Padres are hitting, pitching and executing at a level rarely seen in a city that has never celebrated a World Series title, and this streaking group is eager to keep chasing San Diego's impossible dream.
“We feel great right now, but we're not done,” Manny Machado said Wednesday night after the Padres finished off the Cubs with a 4-1 victory in Game 2. “Winning games like these, it just makes you hungrier to win more.”
The MLB-leading Milwaukee Brewers are up next in the NL division series starting Saturday, but the Padres' clubhouse is full of players who clearly can't wait to test themselves against the best.
“It’s going to be (some) of the highest-level baseball games ever played, so we’re looking forward to it,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said between cigar puffs in the Padres’ booze-soaked clubhouse.
The Padres beat the Cubs by a combined 12-1 in a thorough two-game domination of their 89-win opponent. San Diego's vaunted pitching staff held the majors' highest-scoring offense to eight low-impact hits while the Padres racked up 21 hits of their own, including four homers.
But this is similar to what the Padres have been doing to the majority of their opponents ever since they turned around their season in the second half.
Despite a roster laden with tested veterans and young talent coming off four playoff appearances in the previous six years, the Padres needed four months to find their best form. They scuffled around .500 into the All-Star break and had a losing record on July 25.
And then San Diego got an enormous confidence boost from a three-game sweep of the Brewers at Petco in early August. The Padres eventually won their final seven series and finished with 91 victories, surging past the Cubs and the Phillies to claim the first wild-card berth and homefield advantage in the opening round.
That’s a big deal to the Padres, who won 51 games at Petco Park during the regular season in front of the fans who turn this downtown stadium into a lively party each night during the summer.
“At the beginning, it was tough — it was rough,” said Tatis, who finished with 25 homers despite inexplicably not hitting his first until June 1. “We were looking really ugly. I was looking really ugly. We decided to turn it around, and with this group, nothing is impossible.”
Even the improbable happens with regularity for the Padres these days.
For instance, Gavin Sheets stepped up to the plate on a plantar plate tear in his left foot in Game 2 and blasted a pinch-hit homer on his only swing of the Wild Card Series.
Sheets was determined not to miss the playoffs, and he fought his way back onto the Padres' roster on the last weekend of the regular season even though he probably isn't healthy enough to play defense in October. He got just one chance to contribute against the Cubs, and he set off a celebration.
Sheets said the Padres are glad they didn't have an opening-round bye. They wanted to keep their roll going — and this demolition of the Cubs only boosted San Diego's confidence in its ability to beat the best.
“I think you gain a lot of momentum from series like this,” Sheets said. “Obviously the Brewers are a 1 seed for a reason. They’re a great team. They’ve got great arms. We’ve played them strong all year, and we know what they offer. ... We’re going to start in Milwaukee, and it’s going to be just like here. It’s going to be rocking. But I think there’s some momentum that gets built when you play these two games.”
