Good morning,
Here is how long the baseball season is:
The Padres went 1-11 against the Phillies and Cubs this season.
All of those games were played by July 1.
A little more than 2½ months later, with a little more than a week remaining in the regular season, the three teams have identical records.
The Diamondbacks, Cubs and Phillies all lost last night while the Padres beat the Marlins.
You can read Jeff Sanders’ game story (here) for how that 8-2 victory went down, how Ty France’s career-high 21st home run figured into it and some of the Padres’ thoughts on where they stand.
The Padres, left for dead by many in May and then in June and twice in July and again at the beginning of September, are suddenly on the precipice of hosting a postseason series.
That is by no means a certainty. They are not quite tied with the Cubs and Phillies, because losing the season series to both means they will have to finish with a better record in order to finish ahead of them in the standings.
And, no, a postseason berth has not been clinched yet.
FanGraphs pegs the Padres’ chances of making the postseason at 96%.
Here is another way to think about what a good position the Padres are in: The Padres could go 2-6 the rest of the way and the Diamondbacks would have to win at least seven of their final eight games to finish ahead of them.
In short, any combination of four Padres wins and Diamondbacks losses assures the Padres will be in the postseason. (That could happen by tomorrow.)
The real point to ponder is that after all the angst and dire predictions — and seemingly half the fanbase declaring it was stupid to not sell at the trade deadline — the Padres appear to be the only team in the National League wild-card race stepping up at the end.
The Padres were on the outside of the playoff picture — a half-game behind the Diamondbacks, 5½ games behind the Cubs and six games behind the Phillies — on Sept. 3.
Since then, the Padres are 12-2 while the Cubs and Diamondbacks have gone 6-7 and the Phillies 6-8.
So now the Padres are trying to run down a playoff series at home, where they are 47-29 this season and have won 22 of their past 27.
It remains to be seen how hard they will maneuver if it comes down to choosing between playing at home and lining up their pitching in the optimal way.
Everyone from the players to the people who count the beans for the Padres want as many home postseason games as possible at Petco Park.
But does it really matter all that much in terms of winning the wild-card round?
History suggests it does not.
Since the current best-of-three wild-card series began in 2022, the road team is 9-7.
Tom Krasovic’s column from last night (here) explores the choices that could be ahead for the Padres.
Nick of time
Since returning from a nearly four-month stay on the injured list, Nick Pivetta has turned in three of the kinds of starts the Padres would feel good about in October.
All three runs he has allowed have come on a pair of home runs, and he has allowed just nine other hits in 14 innings.
He is throwing strikes at a 67% rate.
Last night, he walked his first batter since coming back from the time down while rehabbing a right elbow flexor strain.
“It is pretty remarkable,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said, “that he’s been as sharp as he has been in three starts since coming back and really only having one or two rehab starts in that process, too.”
Pivetta’s four-seam fastball was moving last night like it did last season, which is to say at an elite level. The curveball, which is his out pitch, has been the last to come along. That is partly grading on a curve, because he usually executes it at such a high level pretty much whenever he wants to.
“I was a little upset at the one walk,” Pivetta said after going five innings last night. “Three-two curveball. I feel like I have been able to execute that better in the past, but I wasn’t able to do that. And then I just focused on throwing as many strikes as I possibly could and inducing weak contact. And I think that’s kind of what happened tonight.”
One reason Pivetta is so sharp is that he is rested. In particular, pitchers’ hips and legs are fatigued at this point in the season, which affects mechanics and, thus, command.
But Pivetta has made seven starts and thrown a total of 30 innings in 2026 — with all that time in between to rest, condition and work on his mechanics.
“I think that the work that everybody’s helped me with, whether it’s from mechanics to training room to strength,” he said of why he has been so sharp. “A team of people around me, and then my teammates around me too, building confidence. I was just able to pick up kind of what I left doing last year. And once I kind of felt a little bit more healthier, as I feel now, I think I’ve been able to execute a little bit better. … With the way my pitches are working, I’m definitely executing better. It helps being in the strike zone, and that’s nice.”
Upswing
Ask Padres players and staff what has changed from their first 103 games to their past 51 games, and you will get a few different answers.
We will over the next week or so explore the various aspects of their season turning around. It is certainly more than one thing.
But France’s assessment is worth fleshing out a little bit right now.
“Once the offense started swinging it,” France said last night, “that’s when we kind of took off.”
The Padres’ 35-16 record since July 24 is best in the major leagues.
Here is the difference in the offense between when the Padres were a season-worst three games below .500 on July 23 and what they have done since then to get to a season-high 16 games above .500:
Lucky and good
Dustin Harris’ first thought was that he had hit the ball well enough and to a good spot. Then he saw that Marlins shortstop Otto Lopez was positioned directly where the ball was going.
Then he saw his grounder hit the front of the mound and bounce high enough to clear Lopez before coming down almost on the center field grass.
That gave Harris a two-run single that broke a 1-1 tie in the fifth inning.
“Put a good swing on it,” he said. “Happened to go my way, hit off the mound and found some grass.”
Dustin Harris 2-RUN single!
The Padres take a 3-1 lead in the 5th!
Marlins @ Padres#MLB #ForTheFaithful pic.twitter.com/H75m6JUHuQ
— San Diego Strong (@PadresStrong) September 19, 2026
He was right about both assessments — good swing and good fortune.
Because the other thing about the hit was where Harris got his bat to in order to send the ball up the middle.
He turned around a 96 mph fastball at the upper outside corner of the strike zone.
It demonstrated the fast hands Harris has used to hit safely in eight consecutive games and in 12 of his 15 starts since being called up by the Padres near the end of August.
“He can get to anything,” assistant hitting coach Pat O’Sullivan said last night.
Another part of the at-bat was also indicative of what Harris has done since arriving. It’s not just the hands and his smooth stroke. He has demonstrated discipline and cognition.
He had swung through a fastball up and on the outer third the pitch before his hit.
Said Harris: “Then I just consciously tried to make an effort to stay short and just find the barrel and try to put a good swing.”
Harris is batting .373 (22-for-59) with a double and two triples with the Padres, who are his third big-league team this season and fourth since his debut in 2024.
The Padres do not claim to have done anything to change him. They simply told him to be himself and gave him a chance.
His 65 plate appearances are 15 more than he had with the Rangers in 2024 and ‘25 and 13 more than he had with the Astros and White Sox combined this season.
“Definitely from the jump, I’d say it was when I showed up here,” he said of when he felt like the Padres had faith in him. “They just kind of told me just go out there, play your game. They said you’re here for a reason, and don’t try to don’t try to do too much and don’t try to be someone you’re not. So it’s kind of refreshing on that. Just go out there, play play my game, put my product out there, and things fall into place.”
Some work
It was time for Adrian Morejón to pitch just a little. But Stammen couldn’t quite justify using Mason Miller just to get him work.
“I think a four-run lead, I would have pitched both of those guys, definitely,” Stammen said. “Adrián, I probably wanted to get work today.”
Morejón, pitching on more than two days’ rest for the first time since Aug. 29, came in to get the final out in the top of the eighth inning with the Padres ahead 7-2. He threw four pitches.
Mason Miller was warming up in the bottom of the eighth when the Padres added two runs. So he sat down and Griffin Canning finished warming up before getting the final three outs.
Miller, who has shown signs of rust when he has gone too long between outings, will likely get some work tonight almost no matter what.
But this has been a pleasant respite for the heavily relied-upon back end of the bullpen.
Morejón had pitched in 10 of the Padres’ previous 15 games. Miller, Morejon and Bradgley Rodriguez had all pitched three times in the first four days of the road trip the Padres completed Thursday.
Now Miller and Rodriguez have gone three days without pitching.
“It’s a good vacation, for sure,” Miller said yesterday afternoon. “I think that we’ve done a really good job of managing the workload this year, but it did get a little heavy there … for all guys, not just us.”
Morgan’s catch
The Padres promotions staff checks with players from time to time about which celebrity they might want to catch a ceremonial first pitch from.
Among David Morgan’s answers last year was Tony Hawk, a San Diego native and arguably the greatest skateboarder of all time.
So it was that before Morgan went out and pitched in a major league game last night, he got behind the plate and caught a pitch from one of his idols.
“There’s not many people as a kid I looked up to as much as that guy,” Morgan said. “He’s awesome.”
A guy who looks like Tony Hawk tossed the first pitch in San Diego! pic.twitter.com/TDEg7zuTTm
— MLB (@MLB) September 19, 2026
Tidbits
Jackson Merrill went into his eighth-inning at-bat last night needing a base hit to extend his longest hitting streak of the season to nine games. Down 1-2 against left-hander Dax Fulton, Merrill reached down for a pitch at his knees and in slightly off the plate and hit it 432 feet to the seats in right field for his 26th home run of the season. Merrill is batting .475 (19-for-40) with two doubles, two triples and four homers during the streak.
Fernando Tatis Jr. was 1-for-4 with a walk and a run scored to extend two streaks — his on-base streak to 13 games and his run-scoring streak to seven games. The latter is one shy of the team-best eight-game streak Merrill had in August. Tatis is getting on base at a .426 clip over the past dozen games.
France went 2-for-3 last night to get his season batting average up to .301. He needs at least 37 plate appearances over the final eight games to qualify for the batting title.
Jake Cronenworth went 2-for-3 last night and is batting .375 (12-for-32) during an eight-game hitting streak. It was his third consecutive game with two hits. The only Padres player with a longer streak of multi-hit games this season is France, who put together four multi-hit games in July and again in August.
Xander Bogaerts was 2-for-4 with a double last night. He is batting .254 with a .363 on-base percentage over his past 43 games.
Manny Machado was 0-for-4 with a walk last night. He is batting .111 (4-for-36) with five walks over the past nine games.
The Padres have scored 87% of their runs in the first five inning over their past 15 games. Through the season’s first 139 games, the Padres were scoring jus more than half their runs in the first five innings.
Last night was the Padres’ 43rd comeback victory, tied with the Dodgers for second most in the major leagues behind the Diamondbacks (45). That is also three off the franchise record of 46 comeback victories achieved in 1983 and ‘98.
A day after scoring a season-high seven runs in the second inning at Colorado, the Padres scored six in last night’s fifth inning. Those are their their biggest innings in back-to-back game games since they scored nine runs in the fifth inning on June 28, 2024, and six runs in the fifth inning the next day against the Red Sox at Fenway Park.
If the Padres do meet the Cubs in the postseason, that series would feature six of the most productive players in the major leagues over the season’s second half.
All right, that’s it for me.
Talk to you tomorrow.