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Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado showed up, and Michael King could pitch more than one inning.
Read more Padres rout Cubs in Game 1 of NL Wild Card Series
On their own, those factors had the Padres in an entirely different space than they were a year ago.
In the end, too, Joe Musgrove could pitch at all, and the San Diego native was the one who threw the final pitch of an 8-0 victory over the Cubs in Game 1 of the National League Wild Card Series at a filled-to-the-brim Petco Park on Tuesday night.
Tatis and Machado, the players whose arrival in 2019 signaled a shift in the franchise’s trajectory, hit home runs in the first inning to get the Padres going in their latest quest for their first championship.
And King fashioned one of the most dominant pitching performances in Padres postseason history, holding the Cubs without a hit until there was one out in the seventh inning.
A year after a knee injury limited him to making a relief appearance at Wrigley Field in the NL Wild Card Series between the two teams, King finished seven innings having walked three and allowing only Nico Hoerner’s infield single.
It was his second consecutive postseason start in which he threw seven scoreless innings. He is one of four Padres pitchers to ever do so in the playoffs.
After Yuki Matsui retired the Cubs in order in the eighth inning, Musgrove pitched the ninth inning in his first major league appearance since Game 2 of the 2024 National League Division Series. Two years after major elbow surgery, he allowed a pair of singles and walked a batter to load the bases with one out before finishing the game with a popout and a strikeout.
The Padres are one victory away from advancing to a National League Division Series matchup against the top-seeded Brewers. The team that wins Game 1 is 15-1 in wild-card series since MLB went to the best-of-three format in 2022.
Tatis and Machado each had one hit and were a combined 2-for-22 in the three games in Chicago a year ago.
Right away, they signaled 2026 would be different.
They combined to add a run in the third inning. Xander Bogaerts homered in the fourth. Jackson Merrill drove in two more runs and the Padres scored on a wild pitch in the fifth inning to make it 7-0.
Just to that point, the Padres had two more runs in Game 1 than they totaled in last year’s series.
As the players who the Padres would love to be able to count on throughout a long postseason run did, the fans the Padres were counting on showed up as well.
The announced assemblage of 47,084 was the eighth-largest crowd to watch a baseball game at Petco Park.
The Padres wanted to be at home for their National League Wild Card Series because of how well they played there this season and how much they value the atmosphere created by their fans.
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Their 51-30 record at Petco Park was the third-best home mark in team history in a full season and ranked fourth in the majors in 2026.
Almost as importantly, the Padres did not want to play at Wrigley Field.
The crowd at the iconic ballpark is as engaged and relentless as almost any in the league. The playing field is full of quirks. The wind is a factor one way other, and the Cubs are a much better team when that wind is blowing out.
By winning 17 of their final 21 games while the Cubs went 8-11 over the same span, the Padres achieved their goal.
They were rewarded with a spirited gathering that cheered stridently, booed at the right times and buzzed almost throughout.
King began the game by striking out presumptive National League MVP Pete Crow-Armstrong on three pitches, finishing with a 97.6 mph four-seam fastball that was his fastest pitch since 2025.
He then struck out Alex Bregman, who led MLB with a 1.010 OPS in the second half and got Michael Busch to ground out to first baseman Ty France.
Tatis, whose .998 OPS in the second half was second in the major leagues, did not allow for the yellow towels to stop waving.
He swung at a changeup Boyd left over the plate and sent it to center field, where it eluded a leaping Crow-Armstrong and bounced in the Padres’ bullpen.
The crowd hardly had time to settle in again when Machado launched another misplaced changeup over the wall in left-center field.
Cubs starter Matthew Boyd, who shut out the Padres for 4⅓ innings at the start of the opener of last year’s series, retired six consecutive batters after Machado’s home run in the first.
That string was stopped when Tatis drew a one-out walk in the third inning, and Machado came through again by driving a ball to the gap in right-center field.
Bogaerts’ home run off Boyd came on a 3-2 changeup Boyd again sent to the heart of the strike zone and Bogaerts sent to the second balcony of the Western Metal Building.
Javier Assad took over for the Cubs in the fifth, and a lead-off single by Luis Campusano and walk by Machado and single by France with one out loaded the bases for Merrill, who grounded a single up the middle off left-hander Ryan Rolison to bring in two runs. Rolison’s next pitch got past catcher Carson Kelly, allowing France to run home.
Tatis added a run in the seventh inning. As in, Tatis alone.
He reached on a slow chopper to shortstop, stole second and then took two more bases when Kelly’s throw trying to get him bounced off the bag and rolled into shallow left field.
Read more Michael King fires 7 strong innings as Padres blank Cubs in Game 1
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This story was originally published September 29, 2026 at 10:27 PM.