The Cubs had one of the best offenses in baseball. They scored one run in two games and went home.
San Diego completed a Wild Card Series sweep with a 4-1 win on Wednesday, after opening with an 8-0 shutout at Petco Park behind Michael King and Joe Musgrove.
Gavin Sheets Off the Bench, Off a Triple-Digit Fastball
Sheets came in to pinch hit and homered on a 100.8 mph fastball for two runs. That is the swing of the series.
The context makes it better. Sheets missed much of September with a plantar plate tear in his left foot. He had barely played, came off the bench cold, and turned around one of the hardest pitches anybody threw in the series.
Manager Craig Stammen explained the decision simply: “We felt like Gavin was a good matchup for some of their right-handed pitching.” It worked on the first try.
Five Pitchers, Five Hits
San Diego used five arms to hold Chicago to five hits. The relief group of Bradgley Rodriguez, Jason Adam, Adrian Morejon and Mason Miller combined for 5 2/3 scoreless innings.
That is how the modern Padres are built. No starter goes seven, and the back of the bullpen is good enough that it does not matter.
Chicago’s Best Hitters Disappeared
Pete Crow-Armstrong and Alex Bregman went a combined 0-for-15 with eight strikeouts and one walk across the series.
Fifteen at-bats is a small sample, and in a best-of-three it is the entire sample. The Cubs built a team around an offense that led the league, ran into playoff pitching, and the top of their order produced nothing. That is the oldest story in October baseball and it does not get less painful with repetition.
A Record Nobody Saw Coming
Catcher Ethan Salas became the youngest player ever to catch a postseason game. San Diego handed its most demanding defensive position to a teenager in an elimination series and watched its staff throw a shutout and a one-run game.
Milwaukee Is Next and It Is a Problem
The Padres face the Brewers in the NLDS, with Game 1 Saturday at 8:30 p.m. ET in Milwaukee. The Brewers were the NL’s top seed at 103 wins.
Milwaukee starts Jacob Misiorowski in Game 1, described as the presumptive NL Cy Young winner. San Diego’s bullpen-first formula works against teams that need to score four or five. It is a harder sell against a 103-win club with the best starter in the league going in the opener.
This is the first postseason meeting between the Padres and Brewers. San Diego arrives having allowed one run in two games, which is the best possible way to walk into a series it is not supposed to win.
Sheets’ age, the pitcher decisions and any Cubs front-office fallout have not been reported.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.