All those losses to the Dodgers are history.
“Look at everybody’s faces,” Trent Grisham said in the midst of last night’s celebration in the Padres’ clubhouse. “No one cares about the regular season anymore. We’re in the postseason, and we did it.”
The regular season? The Dodgers are incredible at it. They won 111 games this season, more than all but four teams in history. They beat the Padres 14 times in 19 games. It was the 12th consecutive season L.A. had a winning record against the Padres, and it had not in that span ever been more lopsided than the 5-14 mark of 2022. It had only been even that bad two other times since 2011.
But at the end, when the two teams met in a best-of-five series that counted more than any previous meetings, the Padres won.
“I was on the other side of the game where I was physically getting beaten up all year by these guys,” Joe Musgrove, the Padres pitcher and San Diego native, said last night as he held a beer and wore sunglasses and a “NLCS” T-shirt drenched in champagne. “I used to be a fan, so I used to sit in the stands and watch my team get beat up by these guys. And as much as we understand that we’ve got a long way to go still and there’s plenty of baseball ahead of us, it feels damn good, and it should be celebrated. It’s been a long time since we knocked these guys off.”
There are a lot more quotes about beating L.A. and details about the seventh inning and the scene inside Petco Park last night in my game story (here) from the 5-3 victory that secured the Padres’ first trip to the National League Championship Series since 1998.
They host the Phillies for the start of the NLCS on Tuesday. Game times have not been determined, but my boss wrote a story (here) explaining Game 1 is expected to start at 5:07 p.m. PT with Game 2 likely to be played Wednesday afternoon.
The problem with words such as “epic” being used so liberally is that it waters down the moments when such a word is appropriate to describe what happened.
Well, last night’s five-run seventh inning and the ensuing six consecutive outs two hard-throwing relievers got in the rain in front of a rapturous and record crowd to secure a victory over a despised opponent was epic for a franchise and its fan base.
It is virtually impossible to fit any more people inside of Petco Park than the 45,137 that were a Friday’s game. But they evidently found space for two more Saturday, as the announced crowd was 45,139.
“It was electric,” Wil Myers said. “Of all the games I’ve ever played in the big leagues, these are the two loudest games I’ve ever played. The crowd brought it, and that’s what helped us win tonight.”
Maybe it was confusing to those sitting in another locale watching last night’s game on television and wondering why, with Josh Hader facing Freddie Freeman with two strikes in the ninth inning, the crowd was chanting, “Beat L.A.”
If you know you know.
It’s an almost inexplicably paradoxical hatred. It’s being so certain where you live is better but also being a little envious of the cool things L.A. has. Winning sports franchises, for one thing. It’s an inferiority and superiority complex mixed into one.
Most are born into a hatred of Los Angeles. But it can be adopted.
“I (expletive) hate them,” Padres relief pitcher Tim Hill said last night. “I’ve hated them for three years, and here we are.”
Nope. Musgrove isn’t the only Padres player to despise the Dodgers.
Have you ever been bullied? The Padres had.
Ever had your pride stomped and had it seem like you were incapable of doing anything about it? Ever finally done something about it?
The left-hander escaped a jam in the top of the seventh that made the miracle in the bottom of the seventh possible. He entered the game with one out and runners on first and second, had those runners pull a double steal on the first pitch he threw and then retired the next two batters without further incident.
“I’ve faced these guys so many times, it’s just do what you’re supposed to; that’s it,” he said. “Also, (expletive) those (expletives).”
OK, then. Time to move on.
The Padres know that. They knew it last night.
“The Dodgers, they set such a high bar,” Padres President of Baseball Operations A.J. Preller said. “They have a great team, great players, great coaches. They do such a great job. I think we understand there’s a few more steps we’re gonna have to take, but most likely, if we were gonna get to to where we want to get to, it was going to go through the Dodgers.”
So in their joy Sunday was the release of having gotten past the team they couldn’t get past and that they knew they had to if they were to have a chance to win the franchise’s first World Series.
“At some point we had to beat this team in a big moment, and I think this is what we wanted,” Myers said. “We wanted to go ahead and take them on right here. And we were able to get it done.”
Fact is, the extra kick to the Padres’ jubilation was a compliment to the Dodgers.
“We beat one of the best teams in baseball,” Manny Machado said. “And it feels good. It feels good. It feels really good.”
You can read more about the scene last night at Petco Park in Kirk Kenney’s article (here) and Bryce Miller’s column (here). we also had three photographers at the ballpark game capturing moments (here) from before the game until after it ended.
And if you’re into champagne celebrations for events that happen every 24 years or so, check out Annie Heilbrunn’s video (here) from the clubhouse.
Yu Darvish was going to start Game 5 Sunday in Los Angeles on three days’ rest had it been necessary. That would have been a first.
“I prepared,” he said last night. “I didn’t do any weight training. I was ready for tomorrow for sure.”
He had “no idea” how long he could go.
“But I was ready to pitch,” he said.
Now the Padres have their starting pitching available to deploy as they want. Darvish can start Tuesday, Blake Snell on Wednesday and Musgrove in Game 3 on Friday.
The Padres will need to decide whether it is Mike Clevinger or Sean Manaea starts Game 4 before Darvish can come back for Game 5, if it is necessary.
It was a pretty cool last year when Padres catcher Austin Nola and his brother, Phillies pitcher Aaron Nola, faced each other for the first time. It was an even better story when they met again in June and Austin’s single off Aaron in the sixth inning was the only run of the game.
“We could have never imagined this in a playoff atmosphere,” Austin said last night. “I can tell you right now we always imagined facing each other in the big leagues. But I don’t think we ever imagined it in the CS. I don’t think that ever happened.”
A.J. and Stacie Nola, parents of the ball-playing brothers, have been flying around the country to watch their sons play in the postseason. They can now be in one place.
“I can only imagine my parents right now,” he said. “They’re in Philadelphia right now. … What’s going through their mind right now? What’s about to happen? I don’t think it’s hit them. I really don’t.”
In terms of win differential in the regular season, the 89-win Padres beating the 111-win Dodgers was the second-largest postseason upset in history behind only the White Sox (93 wins) beating the Cubs (116 wins) in the 1906 World Series.
And the fact that the fifth-seeded Padres are facing the sixth-seeded Phillies for the pennant is sure to rub some the wrong way. Remember, the playoffs were expanded by one team this year, and the new format meant the top two seeds in each league got a bye.
“Maybe there’s something to the fact that there’s a layoff for a team,” Melvin said before yesterday’s game. “I’m not sure. I think anybody before the postseason started would rather have that. But I really don’t know what’s fair. Each game has its own personality. I don’t know what to tell you. There are times that the top seeds have won throughout; there are times that the bottom seeds have played better.”
Afterward, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was sure to praise the victors.
“You’ve got to give the Padres credit,” he said. “They outplayed us this series. … I don’t want to take anything away from those guys because they earned this series victory.”
Pressed on the possibility his team suffered some sort of onset of rust from the five-day layoff between the end of the regular season and the beginning of the NL Division Series, he didn’t dismiss the notion.
“I think that’s something that we could probably debate, but I think leading up to it, even right now, it’s not something that we want to look at as an excuse,” Roberts said. “That’s kind of the format the way it is, and you do the best you can in the regular season to put yourself in a position to get home-field advantage, to get the bye in the Wild Card round, and it’s up to us to kind of prepare ourselves the best way we can to get through a Division Series, and we didn’t.”
It had been clear for months the Padres were not going to win the NL West and, thus, would be playing in the wild-card round if they made the postseason. Melvin had chosen late in the season to play up the idea his team might be better off having to keep winning almost to the end of the regular season to qualify for the playoffs and then keep on playing.
The Padres did look back on beating the Mets in New York in last week’s best-of-three wild-card series as beneficial.
“That’s two 100-win teams that we’ve knocked off already,” Musgrove said. “Two of the better teams in baseball this year, and it feels really good to get the momentum going into those series, doing it in New York on the road and then coming back home and getting to experience what it’s like in San Diego.”
Josh Hader, Annihilating the Side. ? pic.twitter.com/6tTY4JKUyY
“So happy,” he said. “I mean, this is crazy. I can’t wait to go out in San Diego tonight.”
Wil Myers and his wife Maggie are out in downtown San Diego, buying shots for everyone in every bar they enter and thanking fans, high-fiving and celebrating. What a moment for the longest-tenured #Padres player. pic.twitter.com/MgwicXJ9n4
All right, that’s it for me. No newsletter today. But we will have plenty of coverage on our Padres page, including a look ahead at the Phillies and in-depth recap (with input from those who participated) of last night’s fateful seventh inning.
I will have a newsletter Tuesday, the morning of Game 1. Talk to you then.
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