Cubs' promising season comes to abrupt halt with Wild Card sweep by Padres

SAN DIEGO -- This was not how this Cubs’ season was supposed to end. This script offered the ballclub the same path through October as a year ago, giving the North Siders a shot at redemption after last fall’s postseason exit against the rival Brewers.

This was the 10th anniversary of the 2016 triumph and a year featuring an MVP-caliber performance from Pete Crow-Armstrong. It was a season in which the front office went all in over the winter and again at the Trade Deadline. A deep run was the expectation, but the Padres never flipped through the first draft of Chicago’s story.

On Wednesday night, the Padres sent the Cubs into an early offseason with a 4-1 victory that completed a sweep in the National League Wild Card Series at Petco Park. And now Chicago’s players, staff and roster builders will get to work on dissecting how a team with baseball’s best defense and highest-scoring offense was sent packing so soon.

Meanwhile, it will be the Padres who head to Milwaukee for the National League Division Series.

In the final game of what will go down as a season of missed opportunity, the Cubs’ dynamic duo of Crow-Armstrong and Alex Bregman was silenced by San Diego’s pitching staff for a second straight game. They combined to go 0-for-15 with eight strikeouts in the two losses.

Cubs righty Kevin Gausman -- one of the marquee additions at the Deadline -- worked into the fourth in an outing of mixed results, much like his brief tenure with the team.

And the biggest blow arrived in the fourth inning, when Cubs reliever Daniel Palencia unleashed a 100.8 mph fastball and watched pinch-hitter Gavin Sheets send it rocketing into the right-field stands for a two-run homer. The Petco Park crowd erupted and the odds were swiftly stacked against the Cubs, given the elite arms the Padres would roll out of their bullpen.