LOS ANGELES — Eleven days ago, after starting a lopsided win in San Francisco, Joe Musgrove told a clubhouse filled with his teammates that he had never had as much fun playing baseball as he had this season. The Padres were still several victories away from guaranteeing themselves a chance to reattempt what they achieved in 2022. That fall, Musgrove silenced the Citi Field crowd in an emotionally charged elimination game. Less than a week later, the San Diego native delivered at Petco Park as the Padres secured one of the biggest upsets in playoff history.
Those Padres had plenty of fun in the end. They toppled the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Division Series. They made it to the franchise’s first National League Championship Series in 24 years. They also spent much of that summer torturing their fan base.
“We went on a good run, but I don’t feel like anybody really knew what it was that was making us so good,” Musgrove said Tuesday afternoon. “I feel like we just got hot at a good time and we were kind of riding a wave of energy and adrenaline. … It was, like, a blackout month. I think everyone was just stepping up in a big moment, but there wasn’t, like, this big plan in place or steps that we were taking to get us to that point. It kind of just happened.
“This year, we put these plans in place from the get-go of how we’re going to get to this point in the season and how we’re going to carry ourselves, the things that we’re going to do, and it’s panning out exactly how we had hoped.”
Tuesday night, reality turned out to be better than fantasy. The Padres continued their resurgence from a disastrous 2023 by clinching a return to the playoffs with a game-ending triple play. In a season that already included Dylan Cease’s no-hitter, a barrage of timely hits and comeback win after comeback win, third baseman Manny Machado started the most unlikely event yet.
In MLB history, there have been:
over 700 triple plays turned
over 300 no-hitters thrown
over 300 sets of back-to-back-to-back HR
over 100 comeback wins from 8+ runs downOnly one team has done all 4 in the same season.
That team is the 2024 @Padres. pic.twitter.com/4LwVL3M2rb
— OptaSTATS (@OptaSTATS) September 25, 2024
The Padres were 50-49 at the All-Star break. They opened the second half with a 7-0 loss. They have since won 41 times in a 57-game span, the first Padres team to ever do that. Good luck and improved health for multiple star players are helping. But those same factors have felt like a reward for months of fundamentally sound baseball.
“We’ve played like this all year,” infielder Jake Cronenworth said.
“Both sides of the ball understand what we’re going to do: We’re going to do whatever it takes to win,” Musgrove said. “If that means giving up an at-bat late in the game or not getting the quality start because the reliever coming in behind you is the better option, then so be it. We’ll do whatever we got to do to win games.”
“We believe we are this team,” left fielder Jurickson Profar said.
This team has bottled the brand of unselfish baseball that fueled the Padres late in 2022 and, after their fate was effectively sealed, late in 2023. First-year manager Mike Shildt and first-year hitting coach Victor Rodriguez stressed “Petco Park hitting” from the first day of spring training. That contact-prone approach is behind a striking turnaround from last season’s repeated failures in the clutch.
Adjustments from the top have been noticeable. Longtime general manager A.J. Preller attacked the trade market earlier than usual, acquiring Cease in March and Luis Arraez in May. With the additions of Arraez and Donovan Solano and David Peralta, the Padres assembled a roster capable of executing a revamped game plan on offense. Michael King, the headliner in the return for Soto, has been one of the best starting pitchers in baseball.
“From day one, he was the first name we mentioned to the Yankees. Michael had to be a part of this,” Preller said. “If we were gonna replace Juan, you knew … it was going to take a lot of different guys. But Michael has been as good as we could’ve asked him to be.”
At the trade deadline, Preller aggressively upgraded a bullpen that now has no shortage of options. The Padres still have plenty of star power, but they also have something else that helped them weather the lengthy absences of Musgrove, Yu Darvish, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Xander Bogaerts.
“It speaks volumes about the depth that we have in our organization,” pitching coach Ruben Niebla said, when asked about a staff that has performed its best in recent weeks. “That’s what it takes to win a championship.”
Jurickson Profar has had a remarkable season. (Jayne Kamin-Oncea / USA Today)
There have been surprises along the way. No one expected Profar, at age 31, to go from a career-worst season to a campaign worthy of down-ballot MVP votes. Few people anticipated that shortstop Jackson Merrill would burst into the majors as a power-hitting, All-Star center fielder. Last November, the Padres picked up reliever Jeremiah Estrada on waivers. In May, he set an expansion-era record by striking out 13 consecutive batters.
“It’s a good ballclub, man,” Machado said. “We enjoy playing every single day. It’s been a long season — ups and downs. And coming to the ballpark has been fun every single day. We were down some key guys on our team, and guys stepped up big time. You know, Peralta, Solano, our pitching staff, our bullpen. Estrada. I mean, it’s taken a whole effort as a whole organization to be where we’re at today.”
The Padres showed Tuesday they are not without potentially significant flaws. Bogaerts, who is readjusting to shortstop while Ha-Seong Kim remains out, airmailed a throw and thus allowed the Dodgers to score the first run. Then the Padres responded by thwarting a double-steal attempt and scoring two runs the next inning.
All-Star closer Robert Suarez, who has struggled lately to miss bats, gave up three consecutive singles to open the bottom of the ninth. Then Machado started the triple play.
This was how the Padres secured their return to the postseason and their best regular-season record in a quarter-century. They still have five games to play before October, five games that could vault them to their first division title since 2006.
It might feel miraculous that these Padres have gone 41-16 since July 20. The prior day, they were a .500 team. But inside a clubhouse that is having as much fun as ever, the preparation began months earlier.
“Surprised, with the group of guys we have? No,” Profar said. “It’s a surprise if we didn’t do it. Like, last year. That’s more of a surprise than what we did and what we’re going to do this year.”
(Top photo of Jake Cronenworth celebrating his two-run home run with Jackson Merrill: Katelyn Mulcahy/Getty Images)