LOS ANGELES -- No, it isn’t getting old.
For the first five decades of their existence, the Padres reached the postseason a grand total of five times. With a 4-2 win over the Dodgers on Friday at Dodger Stadium, they’re now going back to the postseason for a fifth time in the last seven years.
This clinch was never straightforward. It was never clear that the Padres would even get here. At one point this summer, it wasn't even clear if they'd keep some of their best players or trade them away.
But here they are, readying for playoff baseball in a third straight autumn -- the first time in franchise history they’ve accomplished that feat. If there were ever a year for that elusive first World Series title, why not this one?
There's an argument to be made that this team is better equipped to handle the rigors of October than the six-month marathon that is the regular season. The Padres built the sport’s best bullpen, and can now turn Mason Miller and Adrian Morejon loose at the back end. They ought to be able to shorten games in October like no other team. Not to mention, their rotation is in the best shape it’s been in all season.
For most of the year, that rotation was in flux. Somehow, the Padres made it work, but they needed to get creative to do so. They found themselves three games below .500 and in 11th place in the National League in late July. Earlier that month, they’d endured a brutal eight-game losing streak that marked their longest in 13 years. Their pitching staff was falling apart.
So, they hatched a plan. Michael King and Walker Buehler would remain traditional starters. The other three spots in the rotation? There would be no regular starters or assigned roles. Miller would cover the ninth. The other eight innings? They belonged to whoever was freshest and whoever provided the best matchups.
The Padres made no secret about it: They were desperate. The Trade Deadline loomed 10 days away, and they’d given the front office and general manager A.J. Preller little reason to be aggressive.
“It’s a weird spot to be in,” first baseman Ty France said at the time. “Basically, if we want to go where we want to go -- and put the front office in position to do what A.J. typically does -- we need to win baseball games. And we’re not.”
Then … they started to.
That unorthodox pitching strategy -- later dubbed "pitching chaos" -- actually worked. Of course, the Padres didn’t need two months of pitching chaos. They just needed a few weeks before the Deadline, earning the right to reinforcements -- earning the right to stay together.
No, the Padres didn’t seriously consider moving Miller. But if things didn’t get better, they’d absolutely considered trading key contributors like King, Morejon and France.
“It was do or die,” Jake Cronenworth said of those nine games in late July and early August.
The Padres bullpenned their way to eight wins in nine, setting up Preller to do what he usually does at the Deadline: He traded three of his top nine prospects for Robbie Ray and Casey Mize.
“We don’t apologize for it,” Preller said that day. “We’re trying to win championships. We’re trying to get to the postseason -- and do it year after year.”
Hard to argue with the results. Say what you will about the expanded playoff format (and it has certainly helped). But this era of Padres baseball is easily the most successful in franchise history. You can’t look at the yearly record books and come to any other conclusion.
But there were never any guarantees this year would end with a return trip to the playoffs. In mid-June, the Padres sported the worst offense in baseball, ranked last in nearly every major category. Fernando Tatis Jr. was in the midst of an epic power outage. Manny Machado and Jackson Merrill were struggling. The Padres hadn’t yet figured out what they had in France.
They insisted that when it clicked -- and it would click -- this offense would mash. Sure enough ...
Tatis, who didn’t hit his first home run until May 30, now has 25 of them. Merrill has 26, Machado 29. France would be on most major rate-stats leaderboards -- if he only qualified. Midseason additions like Samad Taylor, Luis Rengifo, Dustin Harris and Jase Bowen helped steady the ship.
In September, this has been the best offense in baseball. Paired with what was already the best bullpen in baseball. There’s still the matter of figuring out who (and where) they’ll be playing in the Wild Card Series. But the Padres like their chances.
“The goal of every season is you get better as the season goes,” said first-year manager Craig Stammen, who steadied the ship throughout. “There are peaks and valleys throughout. But you want to be trending in the right direction in the end.”
This year, those peaks and valleys were as pronounced as any of the past five playoff-bound seasons. Which made this year’s clinch as sweet as any of those five as well.
With one more peak -- the biggest one yet -- still to climb.