LOS ANGELES — Ten days ago, after starting a lopsided win in San Francisco, Joe Musgrove told his teammates he had never had more fun playing baseball than he was having this season. The San Diego Padres were still several victories away from guaranteeing themselves a chance to reattempt what they achieved in 2022. That fall, Musgrove delivered in what was then the most important game of his career. Less than a week later, he again excelled as San Diego 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. 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.”
The Padres clinched a return to the postseason Tuesday night by turning a game-ending triple play and beating the Dodgers 4-2. Their resurgence from a disastrous 2023 has been building since spring training.
“We believe we are this team,” left fielder Jurickson Profar said. “Early, middle of the season, the results weren’t there because we were missing maybe a couple hits right there, a couple pitches. And then, after the All-Star break, everything clicked together.”
At the break, the Padres were only a game above .500, one of many National League teams vaguely in the hunt within a murky playoff race. Coming out of the break, though, the Padres won 19 of their first 23 games to take hold of a wild-card spot as their playoff odds went through the roof.
Rookie of the Year candidate Jackson Merrill, midseason trade addition Luis Arraez and Profar, a first-time All-Star, have given the Padres’ lineup a boost, while offseason additions Dylan Cease and Michael King have led the rotation. At 33 years old, Robert Suarez has become one of the game’s better closers. The Padres, with five more wins over the next five days, can win the National League West for the first time since 2006.
Even as a wild card, they would be dangerous in October.
And they have been eyeing these kinds of opportunities for years.
Beginning in earnest with the free agent signing of Manny Machado in 2019, the Padres spent a half decade increasing payroll and adding talent. Between 2019 and 2023, the Padres traded for the multi-positional Jake Cronenworth and for starting pitchers Yu Darvish and Musgrove. They signed Korean infielder Ha-Seong Kim, acquired (and kept bringing back) Profar, extended Fernando Tatis Jr. for $340 million, and made a 2022 trade deadline splash for outfielder Juan Soto. Last winter, they signed shortstop Xander Bogaerts to an 11-year, $280-million deal.
Payroll and expectations soared, but the Padres still missed the playoffs in 2019, 2021 and again in 2023, after they opened the season among the favorites in the National League and wound up just two games above .500.
Last winter, the Padres traded Soto to the Yankees but acquired King and catcher Kyle Higashioka in return. They brought back Profar (for the third time), signed setup man Yuki Matsui, and made a spring training trade for Cease. They added Arraez in May and bolstered their bullpen at the trade deadline. Machado has returned to form in the second half, helping spur the Padres’ rise.
If they are to unseat the Dodgers for a division title, the Padres still face the tall task of sweeping Los Angeles and then sweeping the Arizona Diamondbacks. But they are on track for their most wins in a quarter century, and this will be their third playoff appearances in five years (after missing the playoffs the previous 13 seasons in a row).
The Padres have been building this team for years, and the past three months have gotten them back into the playoffs.
(Photo of Padres celebrating: Katelyn Mulcahy / Getty Images)
