A roof cable in Milwaukee. A catch by Garrett Mitchell at the center-field wall. Neither one killed the San Diego Padres' season. A lineup with a $350 million middle of the order couldn't buy a hit when the year hung on it, for the third October running, and that's what did it.
The number that explains Game 4 is three. Three hits, total, in an elimination game at Petco. Fernando Tatis Jr. homered to tie it at one. Manny Machado came up in the eighth with a chance to tie it again, Mitchell caught it at the fence, and Gavin Sheets struck out to end it. Milwaukee won 3-1 and took the best-of-five Division Series in four. San Diego closed the season on an 0-for-21 skid, the longest hitless streak by a National League team to finish a postseason. That happens because your best hitters stop hitting exactly when the schedule leaves no room for it.
It was right there for San Diego. For the first time in 111 years, a postseason series had two teams that were never separated by more than two runs in any game. Three of the four games were decided by a single run. The entire series came down to a combined five runs against the 103-win Brewers. A team this close loses on margins, and the margin the Padres kept giving away was clutch hitting. In Game 1, they left 12 men on base and went 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position while a Ty France drive died on the American Family Field roof. In Game 2, Mason Miller handed Jackson Chourio a walk-off. The offense was the leak in every one of those losses.
The pitching did everything you could ask. Michael King threw two innings out of the bullpen to drag them to a Game 3 win and keep the season alive. Robbie Ray and a bullpen that got worked raw kept San Diego in every game of a series decided by a handful of runs. Blaming the arms here is a fantasy. They held a 103-win team to the minimum and watched the lineup waste it.
Machado, asked about the catch that nearly robbed the biggest at-bat of the year, offered this: "Nice play. Should have hit it harder." That's a man who has been to the playoffs three straight years with this core and treats a season ending like a weather report. He's a symptom. The disease is a group, Machado, Tatis, Bogaerts, Cronenworth, that has now gone to October three years running and has nothing to show for it but increasingly creative ways to go home.
There's a real case for the defense. This team won eight of its last ten, finished 91-71, made the playoffs for the third straight season, and lost a series that genuinely could have flipped on one swing. They played good, legitimate baseball into October. But the job was never to be competitive in September. A.J. Preller built this roster all-in, to win now, with a payroll north of $200 million and stars stacked in the middle. "Now" has arrived three times. Three times, the bats have gone cold when the lights came up.
San Diego can keep running the same expensive core back and hoping October breaks differently. It's tried that already. The hitting didn't show up when it mattered, again, and the man who keeps betting the house on these hitters is the one who should be sweating this winter.
