San Diego did not make it interesting. The Padres shut out the Cubs 8-0 on Tuesday and closed the series out 4-1 on Wednesday, sweeping the Wild Card round as the No. 4 seed and sending Chicago home after two games.
Nine runs allowed across a two-game series is the entire story. The Cubs scored once.
Chicago Never Had a Chance to Breathe
There is no best-of-three format that forgives an 8-0 loss in the opener. The Cubs had to win Game 2 on the road against a pitching staff that had just embarrassed them, and they managed one run.
This is the cruelty of the three-game round for a five seed. A team can win 90-plus games over six months and be finished by Wednesday because its bats went cold for 18 innings. Chicago did not get swept because it was a bad team. It got swept because the sample was too small to recover from one terrible night.
The Reward Looks Brutal
Next up is the Milwaukee Brewers, who won 103 games and hold the No. 1 seed in the National League. Game 1 is Saturday at 8:30 p.m. Eastern on FS1.
On paper that is the worst possible draw. Milwaukee was the best regular-season team in the league by a wide margin and has been sitting, rested, while San Diego worked.
Why San Diego Should Not Mind
Here is the counterargument, and it is stronger than the seeding suggests.
The Brewers have not played a competitive game in days. Layoffs have historically been the top seed’s worst enemy in October, and the Padres arrive with a pitching staff in rhythm and a lineup that just posted eight runs in a playoff opener.
The Division Series is best-of-five with the higher seed hosting Games 1, 2 and 5. San Diego needs to steal exactly one game in Milwaukee to turn the series into a coin flip with two games at home. Teams that just held an opponent to one run over two games are well positioned to steal one.
A 103-win regular season also buys nothing in a five-game set. It means Milwaukee was more consistent from March to September, which is a different skill than winning three games in a week against a staff that is hot.
The Bracket Around Them
The other National League series has the No. 2 Dodgers, who won 100 games, hosting the winner of Thursday night’s winner-take-all Game 3 between the Braves and Phillies in Atlanta. So the Padres know exactly who they play and when, while the Dodgers are still waiting to find out.
San Diego has spent recent years being the team that spends big and bows out early. Sweeping a playoff series without needing a third game is the cleanest version of October this group has produced, and it earned the right to go take a swing at the best team in the league.
The Brewers are favorites. They should be. They are also about to find out whether 103 wins means anything on a Saturday night in October, and recent history says it means less than anybody in Milwaukee would like.
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.