The San Diego Padres were one of the best teams in baseball this season, but that all evaporated when the Los Angeles Dodgers ended their playoff run in Game 5 of the National League Division Series.
The quick exit also led to a few cryptic social media posts from players including Tyler Wade.
In the moment, the team and its biggest stars were devastated.
“Right now, I can’t think of the good moments,” Jurickson Profar said immediately after the Game 5 loss. “We’re out of the playoffs.”
“It’s tough, man,” Manny Machado said. “Any loss, you know, but this team, proud of these guys, man. All year they’ve — since spring training — worked their butts off to get here. And a lot of (people) counted us out, and we overcame a lot of things. Just proud of how this group fought and fought to the end, and we came up short.”
The Padres had all the pieces for a deep postseason run but ran into the league’s best team in the NLDS.
“We had it all, to be honest,” Xander Bogaerts said.
Bogaerts wasn’t shy when it came to talking about Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani. While he was good, he wasn’t David Ortiz circa 2013 when he nearly hit .700 in the World Series.
“No, no, no,” Bogaerts said. “… There’s nothing that I’ve seen close to that yet.”
However, Bogaerts did think this year’s Padres team resembled the 2018 Red Sox.
“Similar to our 2018 Red Sox,” Bogaerts said Friday. “I mean, just we were just that good, you know. And kind of had a lot of feeling of similarities with this team and that team, but it didn’t get the job done.”
It was like a switch was flipped. In a series that seemed to be going the Padres way after two games and the early innings of Game 3, the team just hit a wall. The Dodgers bullpen allowed six runs in Game 2 and none over the final 22 innings of the series.
Los Angeles relievers combined to post a 2.08 ERA, allow a .181 batting average and strand five of the six runners they inherited during the series.
While the Padres thought their bullpen was made for the postseason and could get them to the World Series, it was the offense that faltered.
“The bullpen showed up this series, but the hitting maybe wasn’t the way we know it to be,” Bogaerts said. “But the playoff baseball is a little different, too. But, yeah, that was the only part that didn’t show up — at least consistently.”
It is time to turn the page and look ahead to 2025.
“I firmly expect this group to come back and be ready to go for the consecutive playoff run for two, three, four years,” manager Mike Shildt said. “That will be historic in San Diego baseball history.”
