Why The Padres Can’t Be Counted Out As They Stare At A Playoff Exit

Amid the revelry inside the bowels of Petco Park last Wednesday after their wild-card sweep, Padres stars Manny Machado and Jackson Merrill stood in the middle of their clubhouse shirtless with sunglasses covering their face, the only obstacle standing between the Budweiser bottles pouring all around them and the burn in their eyes. From the side of the room, shortstop Xander Bogaerts surveyed the scene, unpacking everything that had just transpired during the Padres’ decisive victory over the Cubs. The Cubs entered the series with the best offense in baseball and the presumptive National League MVP. They ended it with just one run scored, stifled by Padres starter Michael King in Game 1 and a cavalcade of San Diego bullpen standouts in Game 2 and smothered by a crowd of more than 47,000 towel-waving fans each night. “It had a real impact,” Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller told me. “You can feel our players raising their level up, and their focus and intensity up, just by feeling the crowd’s intensity.” This is why the Padres, who now face a daunting 2-0 deficit in the National League Division Series and needing three straight wins to keep their season alive, can’t be counted out as they return home with the odds stacked against them. In the wild-card series, even the veteran Padres players felt their Petco Park advantage had gone to places previously unseen. Machado is a 15-year MLB veteran who has played in 55 career playoff games and has been in San Diego since 2019. This is his fifth playoff run with the Padres, a stretch that has included multiple battles against the rival Dodgers. And yet what he experienced last week against the Cubs — in front of 47,084 rowdy fans in Game 1 and another 47,513 raucous fans in Game 2 — stood out from the past. “Playing here these last two days, I’ve never felt anything like it,” Machado told me after sealing the sweep. “I never have.” It helped that the home team gave its fans immediate reasons to ignite both nights. Game 1 began with a three-pitch strikeout of Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong in the top of the first inning, followed by a first-pitch home run from Padres outfielder Fernando Tatis Jr. to start the bottom of the frame. Eight runs from the San Diego offense instantly had San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter celebrating. The home lineup didn’t explode quite the same way one night later, but another strikeout of Crow-Armstrong — this one complete with a failed ABS challenge — to begin the evening again turned up the decibels. Then, with the crowd chanting “Ho-ly Sheets,” pinch-hitter Gavin Sheets delivered the decisive blow with a two-run shot. “To get in front of these fans — and I think it’s the best fanbase in baseball, the best ballpark — they brought it,” Sheets said. “Obviously, we fed off of it.” The Sheets hit reminded Bogaerts of the San Diego offense and role players from their 2024 run, a time when many — including the eventual champion Dodgers — considered the Padres one of MLB’s top title contenders. A similar energy, arguably an even more electric one, filled Petco Park last week. At one point, Bogaerts recalled peeking over at the Cubs’ dugout. He thought he saw a team visibly shaken by the surroundings. “I might be wrong,” Bogaerts told me, “but I felt like they were like, ‘Damn, this is a tough place to play.’ They probably won’t admit it, but seeing some of the faces over there, and the yellow flags — it gets loud with the flags — it can be intimidating for the other side.” With the Padres suddenly facing elimination, they will need it to be. “Definitely a task, unfortunately, down 2-0,” Machado said. “Not the ideal position you want to be in. But these boys, this group, we’ve been up against the wall all year. A lot of people didn’t think we would be in this position to begin with, and here we are.” On July 23, the Padres were 50-53, counted out as contenders, left for dead with just 7.4% odds to make the postseason. Their offense was among the worst in the sport, their starting rotation not playoff caliber. They were in third place in the National League West, 15 games back of the Dodgers, four games back of the Diamondbacks and four games back in the wild-card race. And then something magical happened. They won eight of their next nine games to convince their front office to buy at the deadline and finished the year with MLB’s best record over the season’s final 60 games, sparked by an offense that transformed into one of baseball’s best. At home, they were virtually unstoppable. In 30 games at Petco Park after the break, they went 24-6. Including the wild-card series, they’re 53-30 at home this year. Now, their toughest test awaits following two brutal losses in Milwaukee, one in which a potential go-ahead home run ricocheted off a roof cable and another in which the most dominant closer in baseball was unable to hold a lead and even the series. Only 10 MLB teams have ever come back from a 2-0 deficit in a best-of-five format. The 2017 Yankees were in the same boat as the Padres are now. They lost each of their first two games on the road, then stormed back with three straight victories, in part by suffocating the opposing offense back at home. That is now the Padres’ formula, as they try to keep the party alive with a team they feel is as equipped as any to make a deep run. “Since I’ve been here, we’ve been to the playoffs four times,” Padres pitching coach Ruben Niebla told me after the wild-card sweep. “It feels like, for the first time, we’re actually all jelling — offense, defense, bullpen, starting pitching. Everything’s kind of jelling. This is the first time I feel like, ‘Damn, we really do have a complete team right now.’” It looked that way throughout the last two months for the Padres, who displayed their resiliency by rewriting the final chapters of a season that once seemed cooked. As the NLDS shifts to San Diego, can they do it again? “We can,” Machado said Monday. “And we’re going to do it again.”