SAN DIEGO -- For a second time in six days, they sprayed beer, popped champagne and danced to deafening reggaeton beats, commemorating another triumph.
By this point, many of the San Diego Padres players have carved out their roles. Manny Machado douses, Fernando Tatis Jr. dances, and Walker Buehler holds the funnel. With each one, the party becomes more boisterous, the celebration extends a little longer, befitting a team in continual ascension.
Two months ago, these Padres were left for dead. One month ago, they were seen as fringe playoff hopefuls. Now, after a 4-1 beatdown of the Chicago Cubs in a best-of-three wild-card round, they're off to the National League Division Series to face a Milwaukee Brewers team that finished with Major League Baseball's best record. The Brewers will be the overwhelming favorites in that series, which begins from Milwaukee on Saturday, but the odds will overlook one critical aspect:
Everything seems to be coming together for the Padres right now.
"Man, we've been playing some really good baseball," Machado said. "Hopefully we can keep doing that."
The Padres faced a Cubs team that led the majors in every major offensive category and allowed them to score only once. Michael King led the way with seven scoreless innings in Game 1 and the Padres' dominant bullpen finished the job in Game 2, taking the ball from Nick Pivetta and allowing just three baserunners over the game's final 5 2/3 innings.
The contributions on offense were extensive and exhaustive. One night after Tatis and Machado set the tone with first-inning home runs against Cubs starter Matthew Boyd, Gavin Sheets provided the big blow with a pinch-hit two-run homer off Daniel Palencia with two outs in the bottom of the fourth, giving the Padres a 4-1 cushion that proved more than enough. On both nights, Xander Bogaerts, who finally settled into a groove at the start of September, led the way, accumulating seven hits from the bottom half of the lineup.
Bogaerts has been mostly a disappointment since signing an 11-year, $280 million contract in December of 2022, but he's also a two-time champion with more than 50 postseason games under his belt. It's showing up.
"I'm proud of him," said Padres center fielder Jackson Merrill, who contributed four hits himself. "I saw him come out these two games -- he wanted it. He came to the field, and he went after it."
The Padres became the first team in major league history to score at least 12 runs and allow no more than one their first two postseason games, according to ESPN Insights.
The Cubs entered this series with serious questions about their pitching and major demands from their offense. The Cubs proceeded to tally just eight hits in 18 innings, none of which came from Pete Crow-Armstrong or Alex Bregman, the top two hitters in their lineup. The Padres overwhelmed Crow-Armstrong with fastballs and continually attacked Bregman with breaking balls away. They combined to go 0-for-15 with eight strikeouts.
"We just didn't play well enough," Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. "We just couldn't get anything going offensively, obviously."
The Padres got on the board off Kevin Gausman in the second on an RBI single from Bogaerts and a sacrifice fly by Ethan Salas, who, at 20 years and 121 days old, became the youngest catcher to play in a postseason game. The Cubs finally plated their first run when Nico Hoerner lined a base hit up the middle off Pivetta in the fourth, prompting Padres manager Craig Stammen to go to his rested bullpen for the game's final 17 outs.
Bradgley Rodriguez, Jason Adam, Adrian Morejon and Mason Miller took it from there, suffocating the Cubs' offense.
"We do have a strong bullpen, and even the guys we haven't used are very good pitchers also," Stammen said. "That's going to be the strength of our team as we go through the postseason."
Back on July 23, the Padres were 50-53 and members of their front office were giving serious thought to the possibility of trading Morejon, a pending free agent, and essentially punting for 2027.
But the Padres won six of seven to close out July, prompting general manager A.J. Preller to instead address his shorthanded rotation by acquiring Robbie Ray and Casey Mize before the trade deadline. The Padres went on to go a major league-best 35-17 over the next two months, including 21-5 at home. They began September with a half-game lead over the Arizona Diamondbacks for the third and final wild-card spot and wound up making up five games on the Cubs and Philadelphia Phillies to grab the No. 4 seed and host the first round.
Along the way, everything began to crystalize. Tatis and Merrill turned their seasons around. Pivetta and Joe Musgrove, who made his first appearance in two years while closing out Game 1, got healthy. Ty France continued to be produce from the middle of the order, Machado kept accumulating home runs, and the bullpen remained a strength. Now the Padres are in the NLDS for the fourth time in seven years, set to play a Brewers team they swept in August.
Count them out at your own peril.
"We have to keep finding a way to keep building up from this," Tatis said. "It's not gonna be easy. It's gonna be a tough challenge out there against some really good teams. But we're gonna try to find a way."