CHICAGO — The Padres’ October is over.
A 3-1 loss to the Cubs in Game 3 of the National League Wild Card Series provided a painful but also painfully familiar ending.
“This is a position that you don’t want to be in,” Manny Machado said afterward. “We want to be holding up the trophy at the end of the year. It’s our goal at the beginning of the season, and we fell short. … It just sucks.”
The Padres were in a hole early, and an offense that went through plenty of cold spells during the regular season could not make anything of its fleeting chances until the very end of an unseasonably warm autumn Thursday at Wrigley Field.
Jackson Merrill led off the ninth inning with a home run, and two straight hit batters gave the Padres two chances with the potential tying run at first base.
But a groundout and a sharp fly ball to center field followed, and when Pete Crow-Armstrong grabbed that fly ball off the bat of Freddy Fermín in front of the warning track and ivy-covered wall, most of the nearly 41,000 fans who had been standing the entire ninth inning launched into a raucous rendition of “Go Cubs Go” the way they do after every one of the home team’s victories at the old ballpark.
They were celebrating a win Thursday that sent the Cubs team to the NL Division Series, where they will play the Brewers beginning Saturday.
This time, the ditty was a send-off for the Padres, who faded into another offseason that felt like it came too soon.
“Missed opportunity,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said. “Any chance you get to the playoffs and … if you don’t finish the job, it’s just a missed opportunity.”
After 90 wins, two losses brought the 2025 version of the Padres to a close.
Over three days at Wrigley Field, there was all the tension and elation and devastation inherent in a series that ends with one team hugging and shouting and drenched in alcohol and leaves the other in stunned silence and facing an early winter.
“It hurts,” Xander Bogaerts said. “Especially the way we kind of ended the game right there. We gave ourselves a chance. It’s not fun. That is the only bad thing about sports. One gotta win and one gotta lose, and it sucks we’re on the losing side.”
The Padres played two consecutive days under the weight of do-or-die.
They suffered a 3-1 defeat in Game 1, on the final day of September, not even officially the month that is synonymous with baseball’s postseason. They survived the first of those elimination games, on the first day of October — a 3-0 victory powered by Machado’s majestic home run, Mason Miller’s mind-blowing velocity and the overall excellence of a pitching staff.
On Thursday, that bullpen was tasked with keeping a deficit from growing so the Padres could have a chance to come back after the Cubs scored twice in the second inning and Yu Darvish’s day was finished earlier than any of his previous 310 major league starts.
A single, a double, a hit batter and Crow-Armstrong’s RBI single gave the Cubs a 1-0 lead before an out was made in the second inning.
Jeremiah Estrada relieved Darvish and walked the first batter he faced to bring in a run.
Estrada escaped the inning with a strikeout and double play, and his scoreless third was followed by a scoreless fourth inning by Michael King, scoreless fifth by Wandy Peralta and scoreless sixth by Robert Suarez.
“They gave us a chance, and we definitely missed an opportunity,” Tatis said of the pitchers.
“They did a tremendous job and we fell short offensively,” Machado said.
It had been an inconsistent offense that kept the Padres from winning even more this season and perhaps getting a bye into the Division Series.
And it was their undoing in the end.
Cubs starter Jameson Taillon, who came in having pitched sensationally since a mid-August return from the injured list, was asked to work through just four innings Thursday. And he did so expertly.
A 111 mph line drive out by Machado in the first inning, a single grounded through the right side by Ryan O’Hearn in the second and Merrill’s two-out double in the fourth were the only dents the Padres made against Taillon before Cubs manager Craig Counsell deployed his first two relievers.
He used two in the fifth inning.
With the Padres’ three left-handed batters in the 6-7-8 spots due up, left-hander Caleb Thielbar came on to start the fifth and struck out O’Hearn and Jake Cronenworth around a single by Gavin Sheets before being lifted.
Freddy Fermín greeted right-hander Daniel Palencia with a double down the left field line that moved Sheets to third and brought up Tatis.
The Padres’ lead-off hitter, who had struck out on three pitches in his two at-bats against Taillon, hit the fourth pitch he saw from Taillon to right fielder Seiya Suzuki to end the threat.
After Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson robbed a hit from Luis Arraez for the second time in the game, Palencia walked Machado before ending the sixth by getting Merrill to hit a grounder to Swanson, who stepped on second base and threw to first in time to complete a double play.
“That guy is incredible,” Arraez said of Swanson, who in Game 1 made two run-saving plays on balls hit by O’Hearn.
Palencia remained in to face Bogaerts in the seventh, and Bogaerts’ single gave the Padres a runner on to start an inning for the first time in the game.
The hit ended Palencia’s day, as Counsell once again went to a lefty for the trio of left-handed batters due up.
Drew Pomeranz got O’Hearn on a fly ball to center field before Jose Iglesias pinch-hit for Sheets. Bogaerts stole second before Iglesias lined a ball toward second base that Nico Hoerner leaped and caught in the furthest tip of leather on his glove and Croneworth hit a fly ball out to center field.
“They made some incredible defensive plays,” Cronenworth said.
Suarez, the Padres’ closer, had accomplished the goal of keeping the deficit where it was in his first inning.
“You’re in a closing situation,” manager Mike Shildt said of the decision to use Suarez in the seventh. “… At that point it was pretty clear-cut, and we knew we could go to (Adrian) Morejón and (Mason) Miller if we had been able to tie or get ahead.”
But the first batter Suarez faced in eighth, Michael Busch, homered to make it 3-0, and Nico Hoerner followed with a double before Shildt went to Morejón.
The left-hander, working a third consecutive day and having pitched a season-high 2⅓ innings on Wednesday, got out of the inning without any further damage.
Brad Keller came on to protect what became a 3-0 lead in the eighth inning, and Fermín singled at the start before Tatis’ third strikeout was followed by Arraez and Machado groundouts.
Rookie David Morgan had the task of giving the Padres one more shot with the game in reach. He did so with a scoreless eighth inning.
And it came closer to mattering than it had all night. But after Keller hit O’Hearn and Bryce Johnson, Andrew Kittredge made his third appearance of the series and retired Cronenworth and Fermin.
“Tried to get the boys going,” Merrill said. “I thought that I did, and I thought, honestly, like, we had a very good chance. We were in a good spot. … So close.”
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