Three Takeaways: Padres Stifle Cubs’ Stunted Offense to Strut Into NLDS

The Padres shut down MLB’s highest-scoring team for the second straight night on Wednesday, eliminating the Cubs with a 4–1 win that puts them in the National League division series for the fourth time in the last seven years.

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The win continued an incredible 20–6 roll for the Padres that brought them from the edge of the playoff picture to a wild-card series with home-field advantage that paid off handsomely in a raucous Petco Park. It was especially precious after Chicago had won last year’s wild-card series between the two teams at Wrigley Field.

San Diego is baseball’s hottest team, and it will now face the league’s best regular season squad in Milwaukee in the National League division series, starting on Saturday. For Chicago, it’s a bitter ending to a season that showed so much promise and produced a runaway NL MVP favorite who didn’t muster a single hit in this series.

Here are our takeaways from Game 2.

San Diego Shows a Complete Lineup

Unlike in Game 1, the Padres didn’t need their biggest bats to slay the Cubs on Wednesday night. It was the other guys who got it done. A balanced effort saw multiple hitters chip in across the roster, showing the depth of the lineup.

Ty France doubled to open the second inning and was followed by an infield single by Jackson Merrill before Xander Bogaerts singled France home. Ethan Salas was up next and ripped a sacrifice fly to center that scored Merrill from third base to give San Diego an early 2–0 lead. The 20-year-old Salas made history Wednesday night as the youngest player in MLB history to play catcher in a postseason game. His impact was felt with the bat on that sacrifice fly, and behind the plate with an early ABS challenge that prevented a walk and led to a strikeout in the first inning.

In the bottom of the fourth, Gavin Sheets came off the bench with Bogaerts at second and launched a Daniel Palencia fastball deep into the San Diego night. The four-seamer came in at 100.8 mph and left at 107.5 mph and Petco Park, as it tends to do, went wild.

GAVIN SHEETS INTO THE SAN DIEGO NIGHT! pic.twitter.com/jihtlWA1NR

– MLB (@MLB) October 1, 2026

As they have throughout the second half of the season, the Padres got contributions from the entire lineup and didn’t just need to rely on their stars. That’s something every team dreaming of a deep postseason run needs.

Right now, the Friars look set up to do just that.

Pete Crow-No Show

The Cubs led MLB in runs this season with 850, 28 more than the second-place Brewers. You never would have known it by watching them over the past two nights.

Pete Crow-Armstrong had a historic 40-40 season, was the best all-around player in the game and will be named NL MVP in a few weeks. Yet he was invisible against the Padres. Crow-Armstrong finished the two games 0-for-7, with four strikeouts and a walk. He looked completely overmatched at the plate no matter who was on the mound. To be fair to PCA, he was not alone.

The top three in the team’s batting order-Crow-Armstrong, Alex Bregman and Michael Busch-combined to go 0-for-20, with nine strikeouts and three walks.

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Due to a truly mind-boggling rash of injuries, Chicago’s starting rotation was a mess all season, and its bullpen was up-and-down. The offense had to show up for the Cubs to advance out of the wild-card round. How important was the team’s lineup? Chicago hadn’t won a game it didn’t homer in since July 30.

No balls left the yard against the Padres over the last two nights, and now the Cubs are headed home for what will be a long offseason.

Padres Bullpen Lives Up to the Hype

The Padres entered the postseason with the consensus best bullpen in baseball, boasting some of the league’s top high-leverage arms. Those guys were able to rest Tuesday night in an 8–0 blowout, and they showed up in Game 2 ready to shut the door on Chicago.

Starter Nick Pivetta only lasted 3 ⅓ innings and left the game with a 2–1 lead, but there was a mess on the bases as he walked off the field. Rookie Bradgley Rodriguez took the mound with two on and a ton of pressure on his shoulders. No matter. He struck Matt Shaw out on three upper-90s darts, then after hitting Carson Kelly, got Dansby Swanson to fly out weakly to center. Rodriguez came out for a second inning and was just as sharp, getting Crow-Armstrong and Bregman on flyouts, then allowing a walk to Busch before striking out Seiya Suzuki on a 99 mph fastball.

That was the start of San Diego’s bullpen parade, which included a shutout inning from Jason Adam and two from Adrian Morejon, before Mason Miller made his slow jog in from center field to put the Cubs out of their misery. The relief corps allowed two hits and one walk over the final 5 ⅔ innings.

In the series, the Padres’ bullpen threw 7 ⅔ shutout innings, allowing four hits and two walks while striking out seven. Unlike the Cubs’ high-scoring offense, San Diego’s bullpen showed up as advertised.

Ballgame over.

Series over.

The Padres are on their way to the NLDS! #CLINCHED

(MLB x @BudweiserUSA) pic.twitter.com/7L7W7ch9H9

– MLB (@MLB) October 1, 2026

This article was originally published on www.si.com as Three Takeaways: Padres Stifle Cubs’ Stunted Offense to Strut Into NLDS.

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This story was originally published September 30, 2026 at 10:56 PM.