SAN DIEGO -- The Padres spent September as the hottest team in baseball, surging into the postseason and securing a Wild Card Series at Petco Park.
Gavin Sheets spent most of the month in a walking boot.
All summer, Sheets had been playing through a nasty injury -- a plantar plate tear in his left foot. He wondered if he’d be able to contribute at all. There was certainly no way he could contribute defensively.
But maybe … just maybe … if Sheets could heal just enough … he could deliver a meaningful swing or two in the postseason.
A swing like this one.
Sheets came off the bench to deliver the swing that broke the Cubs in Game 2 of the National League Wild Card Series on Wednesday night -- a pinch-hit, two-run home run that sent Petco Park into delirium and the Padres on course for Milwaukee.
With their 4-1 victory over the Cubs, San Diego secured a trip to the NL Division Series against the Brewers, beginning on Saturday night. But first, the Padres staged a party in the home clubhouse at Petco Park.
Before the champagne was popped and the cigars were lit, manager Craig Stammen stood at the center of it all.
“We had 13 bricks to lay,” Stammen said. “Two down, 11 more to go.”
The next three almost certainly won’t come quite so easily. For the fourth time in seven seasons, the Padres are headed to the NLDS, where they’ll meet Milwaukee in a playoff series for the first time. The Brewers own the sport’s best record. Jacob Misiorowski, the presumptive NL Cy Young Award winner, takes the ball first.
“We know who they’re throwing Game 1,” said Xander Bogaerts. “So let’s celebrate today. And then be ready for that fastball.”
Call it sweet revenge for the Padres after their 2025 season came to an end with a Wild Card Series exit at Wrigley Field.
They made quick work of the Cubs, dispatching them in two games that were never all that close. The two teams played 18 innings at Petco Park this week. The Padres led after 17 of them. The Chicago offense, which scored more runs than any other team during the regular season, was held to one across two playoff games.
“We just didn't play well enough,” said Cubs manager Craig Counsell. “And they're playing really well.”
In Game 1, the Padres were a force of nature. The ballpark partied from the very first pitch (a Michael King fastball past Pete Crow-Armstrong) to the very last pitch (Joe Musgrove punctuating his triumphant return to the mound with a game-ending strikeout). They won, 8-0.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Manny Machado, a veteran of eight postseasons, said of the home crowd this week. “That was huge.”
Game 2 brought a different kind of postseason energy. A party, to be sure. But one with some tension mixed in. October baseball, on the final day of September.
San Diego jumped in front in the second with Bogaerts’ RBI single and Ethan Salas’ sacrifice fly. (Salas, the youngest player in history to catch a postseason game, also became the youngest player at any position with a postseason sac fly -- since at least 1954 when that stat was fully tracked.)
But the Cubs scratched a run back against Nick Pivetta in the fourth and worked their way into the Padres’ bullpen. Crow-Armstrong and the top of the lineup loomed in the fifth.
There were two outs and a runner aboard, and Counsell had gone with right-hander Daniel Palencia. Sheets strode to the on-deck circle, then, eventually, the batter’s box -- with those three familiar thuds echoing through the Petco Park sound system.
HO-LY SHEETS.
“You just get ready for that moment, so when it happens you don’t feel like it’s sped up on you,” Sheets said. “To see this fanbase the whole entire time, I just wanted to get in front of them, I wanted to play. These guys brought it.”
This was the moment the Padres had been planning for. When Sheets is right, he mashes right-handed pitching. He’s a weapon in the clutch and can be a force off the bench.
“We had talked about that move, probably more than I care to admit in my office, with our pro scouting and advanced scouting,” Stammen said. “We felt like Gavin was a good matchup for some of their right-handed pitching. … That’s why we put him on the bench today, just in case he could pop one like that in a big situation.
“Doesn’t always work out that way. But he made us all look good.”
In the end, Sheets would take all of one swing across two games in the series. He made it count.
Palencia threw a 100.8 mph fastball at the bottom of the zone on the inner half. Sheets turned on it -- the hardest pitch any Padre has ever homered on, regular or postseason.
“That’s Dairy Bonds, baby,” said Jackson Merrill, between puffs of a cigar in a raucous Padres clubhouse. “That’s what he does -- 101, down and in. You just don’t see that. That was sick. That was one of the cooler home runs I’ve ever seen.”
The Padres led, 4-1. Their lockdown bullpen took it from there. They’ll party straight to Milwaukee.
And then get ready for that fastball.