CHICAGO — The ending? Familiar. Painfully familiar.
The 2025 Padres spent the winter, spring and summer determined to atone for last October’s bitter ending — only for the same bitter ending to befall them again.
Another winner-take-all game on the road. Another unsatisfactory showing from the San Diego offense. Another postseason exit earlier than they ever anticipated.
The Padres are headed home after a 3-1 loss to the Cubs on Thursday in Game 3 of the National League Wild Card Series at Wrigley Field. After their Game 5 Division Series loss to the Dodgers a year ago, it’s the second consecutive year the Padres’ season has ended with disappointment in a winner-take-all game.
“This sucks,” said center fielder Jackson Merrill, who accounted for the Padres’ only run with a solo homer in the ninth inning. “This one hurts. I thought last year hurt. But this one hurts. Tight-knit group, a bunch of grinders. We had injuries left and right, still putting up a fight. It just didn’t go our way.”
And it didn’t go their way for largely the same reason: In the biggest games, in the biggest moments, there simply wasn’t enough offense to be found. The Padres scored five runs in the entire three-game Wild Card Series — after famously being shut out over the final two games of their 2024 playoff run.
The Padres’ pitching staff gave just about everything on Thursday. Michael King covered a relief inning, closer Robert Suarez entered in the sixth, Adrian Morejon pitched for a third straight day, despite having thrown 2 1/3 innings in Game 2. Jeremiah Estrada entered with the bases loaded and no outs in the second inning and allowed just one of those runners to score.
“They gave us a chance,” said Fernando Tatis Jr. “And we definitely missed an opportunity.”
Tatis entered the series with some of the best postseason numbers in MLB history but struggled all series — particularly in the finale. He struck out three times in an 0-for-4 showing. In the aftermath, he stood at his locker, red-eyed, visibly dismayed at the ending.
But even if the ending was the same as it was a year ago, the details were different. And, to an extent, those details matter. This was not Game 5 at Dodger Stadium when the San Diego bats were lifeless for nine innings, mustering just two hits and going down quietly.
The Padres had plenty of opportunities on Thursday, but they finished 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position — routinely thwarted by brilliant plays from the Cubs defensively. Specifically, there were a handful of them from Dansby Swanson at shortstop.
“San Diego is an unbelievable team,” Swanson said. “They have such a deep pitching staff, and obviously great hitters, as well. Being able to just limit them in opportunities to score was huge for us, and it ended up making a big difference.”
The Padres kept fighting. In the ninth, they nearly pulled off a miracle comeback. Merrill led off the inning with a towering drive into the basket in right field. Following Merrill was Xander Bogaerts, who put together some of the Padres’ best at-bats all series. He worked the count full, then looked at a pitch several inches below the strike zone.
It was called strike three.
A typically even-keel Bogaerts grew irate. He slumped into a crouch, then sprang out of it, yelling in the direction of home-plate umpire D.J. Reyburn. An hour or so later, amid the din of a disappointed clubhouse, it had dawned on Bogaerts that the next time he takes an at-bat, he’ll have a chance to do something about that call — with MLB set to implement the ABS challenge system next year.
“You can’t go back in time, and talking about it now won’t change anything,” Bogaerts said. “But it was bad. Thank god for ABS next year.”
What happened next might make that missed call an all-time Padres “what if.” Ryan O’Hearn and Bryce Johnson were hit by pitches and then advanced on Jake Cronenworth’s groundout. Freddy Fermin came to the plate with the tying runs in scoring position and two outs. He lifted a deep fly ball to center field …
… into the glove of Pete Crow-Armstrong. Like that, the Padres’ season was over.
“It sucks,” said third baseman Manny Machado. “For sure. It’s a position you don’t want to be in. We wanted to be holding up the trophy at the end of the year. It was our goal at the beginning of the season. We fell short.”
And now come the questions. An offseason’s worth of them. These Padres will not be next year’s Padres. And that reality set in in an instant.
“We’re a family,” Merrill said. “It sucks. You’re breaking up with family. Some guys aren’t going to come back, some guys will. But we love everybody in here.”
A sullen visiting clubhouse clearly had a hard time accepting that fact. One by one, a few Padres pulled their clubhouse chairs to surround the couch area in the center of everything.
Merrill, after he finished his interview, walked to a nearby cooler, and returned with two cold beverages in each hand and two more in each back pocket. He emptied them onto the coffee table.
They were quickly scooped up. The Padres’ season was over far sooner than they anticipated. And they all needed to process that fact together.
“We put everything we have into this,” said Cronenworth. “From the minute the offseason starts. From Spring Training throughout the entire year, every day we show up to the field. It stings. All of our energy, time and effort is put into this group. It stings when it doesn’t work out.”
