CHICAGO — The postseason comes at a team fast. It can go by quickly, too.
Two days after completing a regular season that spans six months, four teams find themselves on the precipice of elimination.
One of those teams is the Padres, who lost Game 1 of their National League Wild Card Series on Tuesday in the same way they lost a number of games in 2025.
They failed to get runners home and watched their opponent hit balls over the wall.
A 3-1 loss to the Cubs at Wrigley Field turned on a pair of home runs in the fifth inning, but it was enabled by the Padres’ inability to drive in a runner from third base with less than two outs in two of the game’s first four innings.
“We definitely had opportunities,” Manny Machado said.
It will take two consecutive victories for that not to be a big part of the epitaph for a largely successful season.
The Padres finished the regular season with the third-fewest home runs in the major leagues. Their batting average with runners in scoring position was third-lowest among the 12 teams that made the postseason, and they scored the second-fewest runs among playoff teams.
The formula of scoring just enough and leaning on a pitching staff that had MLB’s third-best ERA got the Padres the bulk of their 90 victories during the regular season.
It also left them vulnerable to teams that could score quickly, such as the Cubs, who hit the third-most home runs in the NL.
The Padres’ best starting pitcher in the regular season was sensational for four innings Tuesday but paid dearly for a pair of fastballs.
Nick Pivetta began the fifth inning with a 1-0 lead and a streak of 11 batters in a row retired following a one-out single in the first.
The Cubs flipped the score before making their next out. It took just two swings.
Seiya Suzuki tied the game by sending a 2-1 fastball left over the inner third on a line at 112 mph through the wind toward left-center field, a projected 424 feet and halfway up the 18 rows of Wrigley’s famous bleachers.
Carson Kelly’s home run on a 2-2 fastball at the top of the zone sailed higher and was not hit as hard. But it landed in the first row beyond the ivy-covered left field wall, giving the Cubs a 2-1 lead.
“I was able to command the strike zone, get ahead of guys, put pressure on them most of the game,” said Pivetta, who finished with nine strikeouts. “Just two pitches is how it goes sometimes.”
Both homers brought roars from what had been a somewhat subdued crowd, and a rumble remained for almost the entirety of the rest of the afternoon.
“I think in the postseason, (those kinds of) hits just change the stadium,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “It changes the energy of the stadium completely.”
Adrián Morejón replaced Pivetta to start the sixth inning and was greeted by two singles. But the left-hander was able to keep a lid on the old ballpark by ending the inning three pitches later, on a double play grounder and a fly ball to center field.
Mason Miller struck out all three batters he faced in the seventh inning, and Jeremiah Estrada allowed a run on a single, a sacrifice bunt, an intentional walk, a wild pitch and a sacrifice fly in the eighth.
On this day, the Cubs’ bullpen, working with a lead, was the better set of relievers.
Four of them combined to cover the final 4⅔ innings without allowing a baserunner.
Daniel Palencia relieved starter Matthew Boyd with one out and one on in the fifth and worked through the sixth inning before former Padres left-hander Drew Pomeranz breezed through the seventh on 11 pitches, Andrew Kittredge worked the eighth and Brad Keller finished the job in the ninth.
“They had good stuff,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said. “They got on the mound and executed.”
The Padres’ 1-0 lead had come on back-to-back doubles by Jackson Merrill and Xander Bogaerts that began the second inning.
That ended the Padres’ postseason scoring drought at 25 innings, a stretch that dated to early in Game 3 of last year’s NL Division Series.
But they immediately began a new run of futility.
With Bogaerts on third base after center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong’s throw got away from second baseman Nico Hoerner, three straight outs in the infield stranded him there.
The first of those outs was a 101 mph grounder by Ryan O’Hearn that Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson dove to stop, freezing Bogaerts. Swanson threw out O’Hearn before Gavin Sheets popped out to third base and Jake Cronenworth grounded out.
Swanson again foiled O’Hearn in the fourth after Machado drew a lead-off walk, moved to second base on Merrill’s sacrifice bunt and to third on Bogaerts’ infield single that was dribbled to the left side of the infield.
O’Hearn then hit a low flare into left-center field that Swanson ran back 40 feet and grabbed with an over-the-shoulder catch.
“Swanson made probably the two biggest plays in the game,” Bogaerts said. “If either of those balls fall, we’ve got … runs, and the momentum and everything is different.”
O’Hearn did not take solace in Swanson’s excellence.
“You come up in two big situations with a chance to put a run on the board, less than two outs, man on third, frustrating to not get the job done there,” he said. “… The first one, just stay in the middle of the field, try and hit something hard early. Dansby made a good play. And then the second one, I thought I might drop it over him. Just didn’t get enough barrel on it. Yeah, it sucks.”
Sheets’ fly ball out to center field ended the inning, and the Padres would get just one more man on base.
That was No. 9 hitter Freddy Fermín, whose one-out single lined to left field in the fifth inning prompted Counsell to turn to Palencia, the Cubs’ saves leader during the season.
“That’s the outing of the game that was critical,” Counsell said. “You need outs from your starters in these games. You can’t do that every day. But him throwing up five outs in five hitters and going through the top of their lineup, the game made sense after that to me. There was a real path right there.”
The path is even clearer to the Padres. It is as straightforward as it might be short.
Since MLB went to the Wild Card Series format in 2022, every one of the 12 series have been won by the team that won Game 1.
All but two of the Game 1 winners ended the series by winning Game 2.
“Our backs are up against the wall,” Cronenworth said. “Tomorrow is it. Forget about what happened today, come out tomorrow, get a good night’s sleep and play as if it’s our last game, because it is.”
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